Jalap

jalap

[′jal·əp]

(materials)

An orange or reddish solid or a yellowish to brown powder with acrid taste and slight odor; the dried tuberous root of a Mexican plant (Exogonium purga), or the drug prepared from it; used as a cathartic in medicine.

McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific & Technical Terms, 6E, Copyright © 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Jalap

 

(Ipomoea purga), an herbaceous perennial twining plant of the family Convolvulaceae. (The plant is sometimes separated into the genus Exogonium.) The thin, creeping rhizome has thickened tuberous roots. The leaves are cordate. The flowers are large, funnelform, and pinkish violet; one to three flowers are borne by each axillary peduncle. The jalap plant is native to the moist mountainous forests of Mexico. It is cultivated as a medicinal plant in Mexico, Central America, the West Indies, and India. The roots contain 8–12 percent resin, almost 95 percent of which consists of the glycoside convolvulin. Preparations made from dried roots are used as a strong laxative.

REFERENCE

Murav’eva, D. A., and A. F. Gammerman. Tropicheskie i subtropicheskie lekarstvennye rasteniia, Moscow, 1974.

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.