Cipó CabeludoMikania hirsutissima

Did you know?

• Cipó, a word Portuguese took from the Tupi language, is the Brazilian name for a climbing plant, and cabeludo means "hairy", so cipó cabeludo is the "hairy vine". Its Latin species name, hirsutissima, is built on hirsutus, Latin for "hairy"^{[8, 9]}.

• Brazil and Kew disagree about its name. Brazil's official flora accepts Mikania hirsutissima as a species, while Kew's Plants of the World Online and GBIF's backbone taxonomy fold it into Mikania banisteriae^{[1, 2, 3]}.

• Both names come from the same book. De Candolle published M. banisteriae and M. hirsutissima in the same 1836 volume of his Prodromus, only a few pages apart^{[2, 4]}.

• It is a cousin of guaco, the name Brazilians give to two other Mikania vines, M. glomerata and M. laevigata^[13].

• Cipó cabeludo turns up in Rio de Janeiro's open-air herb markets, where three separate market surveys have recorded it^[5].

Origins and history

Cipó cabeludo is a climbing plant that twines around its supports^{[1, 2, 5]}. As both its common and scientific names say, it is notably hairy^{[8, 9]}. It is native to Brazil but not unique to it. Brazil's official flora lists it across the country's northeast, southeast, south and center-west, in the Caatinga, the Cerrado and the Atlantic Forest, and Kew's broader view of the species reaches through northern South America into Central America^{[1, 2]}.

Its story as a named species begins in 1836, in the fifth volume of the Prodromus, the great plant survey of Augustin Pyramus de Candolle. There he described Mikania hirsutissima, and a few pages earlier in the same volume he described Mikania banisteriae^{[2, 4]}. Flora e Funga do Brasil, the country's official plant list, keeps cipó cabeludo as a species of its own^[1], while Kew and GBIF now classify it under M. banisteriae^{[2, 3]}. Raintree's labels use the Brazilian name, M. hirsutissima.

Brazilian interest in the plant goes back a century. It was included in the Brazilian Pharmacopoeia in 1926 and again in 1959^[14]. Later, the pharmacy journal of the University of São Paulo published two botanical studies of it, in 1971 and 1972^[15], and chemists have analyzed its leafy stems in detail since 1999^{[10, 11, 12]}.

Traditional uses

Cipó cabeludo belongs to Brazil's own folk tradition, and it is recorded in the country's herbal literature and sold in its herb markets^{[5, 6, 7]}.

• Urinary tract health

  In Brazilian folk tradition, cipó cabeludo is one of the native plants taken to support a healthy flow of urine. It helps promote urinary tract health.*^{[7, 14]}

• A Brazilian folk herb

  Brazilian researchers reviewing their country's native plants name cipó cabeludo among those with a traditional reputation^[7], and Kew records it in about fifteen published sources on the plants of Brazil and Argentina^[6].

• A market herb

  Traders sell it alongside many other native Brazilian plants in the open-air herb markets of Rio de Janeiro state^[5].

• Leaves and leafy stems

  The leafy aerial parts of the vine are the parts chemists have studied^{[10, 11, 12]}.

Plant compounds

Cipó cabeludo's leafy stems contain a series of diterpenes of the kaurenoic-acid type (ent-kaurenoic acids). Chemists have isolated and described them in detail in studies published between 1999 and 2004^{[10, 11, 12]}. The same work found two sesquiterpenes new to science, named mikaniahumulenes, along with a coumarin and a flavone^[10].