Velvetleaf: A Serendipitous Rendevouz

You know those days when you are supposed to take a right turn in the fork but you are so lost in the web of your burgeoning thoughts that you take a left turn instead and end up on a road leading away from your destination? Well the same thing happened to me on a fortuitous September afternoon.

...a beautiful vine creeping ever so daintily...

So there I was wandering through University roads while my mind was meandering through unknown recesses of consciousness and suddenly on an abandoned corner of the grey asphalt, a beautiful vine creeping ever so daintily stopped my errant thoughts right in their tracks. 

...subglobose, bright red drupes scattered like blood...

The velvet vine creeping and crawling, trailing and trawling was wrapped gracefully around the railing. It stood out from rest of the surrounding green flora because of its compressed, subglobose, bright red drupes(fruit), scattered all over the vine like little red drops of purest blood.

...stem slenderly twisted and coiled like a necklace...

It's pubescent(hairy) stem slenderly twisted and coiled like a necklace for some long lost love.

...little green hearts generating the vital life force...

The leaves were like little green petiolated hearts covered in wooly hair(tomentose) dangling from thin green hairy stem, soaking up the sun to generate vital life force for the vine.

...female inflorescence forming dangling earrings...

The major charm of this velvetleaf vine was its shy female inflorescence hidden in the axils of hoary, imbricate bracts on long racemes forming dangling earrings to match the vine necklace. The male flowers were not so shy trying to woo me with their four little sepals and four tiny petals forming a toothed cup carrying the male essence i.e. the precious pollen.

...the mystery...

For days on my way back home I took that erroneous path on the left just to visit this beauty, figure out its identity and solve mystery of the vine which stopped my errant thoughts right in their tracks. Turns out it was no ordinary ornamental. It was infact a very popular medicinal herb called Cissampelos pareira of Menispermaceae family. 

Cissampelos pareira

Popularly called midwife's herb in the South America and now known as Abuta, it has been effectively used for gynaecological problems by the tribals for a long period.

...male flowers clustered together were not that shy...

In Ayurvedic medicine and Chinese medicine too this herb is one of the reigning cures for any uterine and urinary tract related problems in females. Be it pre-natal, post-natal pains, threatened miscarriage, menstrual cramps, asthma, childbirth, hemorrhages etc. it's an all round panacea for all women's health problems. And it is used as an ornamental in the gardens by some gullible enthusiasts like me who take the wrong turn daily just to get one simple glimpse of this stringing beauty swinging away on its own tune.

...A Serendipitous Rendevouz with Velvetleaf...