What's Blooming

Chabai Tali (Helicteres isora)

Fruits and Flowers Garden, World of Plants

With a vast native range across tropical and subtropical South and Southeast Asia from Pakistan and India through southern China and the Malay Pennisula into Java and the Maluku Islands, chabai tali (Helicteres isora) is a sprawling woody shrub or small tree reaching 4-8 meters in height and usually found in dry, deciduous forests. A former member of the now-obsolete tropical chestnut family (Sterculiaceae), which has since been subsumed into the hibiscus family (Malvaceae), this species is known for its hairy, serrated leaves and curved, tubular brick-red to orange flowers borne in the leaf axils, in clustered inflorescences known as cymes.

Pollinated by birds such as the jungle babbler and different drongo species, as well as butterflies and bees, the five carpels of the ovary develops into a twisted, screw-like fruit, hence one of its common Malay names, chabai tali, meaning ‘rope-like long pepper’ for its seeming resemblance to the fruit of the Java long pepper (Piper retrofractum) to which it is completely unrelated!  Some of the other common names inspired by this species’ unique fruit shape include Indian screw tree, screw tree, or avartani in Sanskrit, meaning ‘rotating’.       

While the fibrous bark was widely used for making cordage for ropes and sacks in the 19^th century, the dried fruits and bark are now more widely used. Known throughout its native tropical Asian native range and as far beyond as Iraq and South Africa for its medicinal properties, India has become one of the major exporters of this species, whose international trade exceeds 100 tonnes annually! 

In Peninsula Malaysia, the dried fruits are used in herbal tonics, particularly those given after childbirth and it is listed as one of the hundred ingredients or ‘rempah ratus’ given to women to promote healing after childbirth.  In Indonesia, the dried fruits are also used in jamu – herbal tonics – and are a primary ingredient in the popular Indonesian herbal remedy Tolak Angin (‘expel wind’), used to remedy everything from stomach ailments, fever, cold symptoms, and headaches. A study of the traditional medicine markets of Johannesburg, South Africa found the fruits of H. isora were the most common imported herbal medicine! Recent medical studies evaluating the dried fruit and bark extracts have shown them to have antioxidant and anti-diabetic, anti-diarrheal, and anti-cancer activities, among others functions.       

Native to the Southeast Asian region, but not Singapore itself, H. isora has great ornamental potential for its upright, gently spreading branches, large, opposite, serrated leaves and bright red flowers. Find in in Gardens by the Bay in the World of Plants, where it occupies pride of place in one of the Fruits and Flowers Garden’s central planters! 

This article is part of our What's Blooming series.