ManacáBrunfelsia uniflora

Did you know?

• Each manacá flower opens deep purple and fades through lilac to white as it ages, so a single bush carries several colors at once^{[2, 3]}.

• That same color change has earned its garden cousins in the genus the English name "yesterday-today-and-tomorrow"^{[8, 9]}.

• One of its old botanical names, Franciscea mutabilis, comes from the Latin mutabilis, "changeable"^{[1, 5]}.

• Its popular Brazilian name, manacá-de-cheiro, means "scented manacá", for the sweet fragrance of its flowers^{[2, 3, 5]}.

• In both Portuguese and Spanish it is also known as "Paraguay jasmine": jasmim-do-paraguai and jazmín del Paraguay^[10].

• Manacá belongs to the nightshade family, the same family as the potato, the tomato and the pepper^{[1, 6]}.

Origins and history

Manacá is a bushy shrub with simple leaves and showy, sweetly scented flowers^{[2, 3]}. It is native mainly to Brazil, where the great majority of botanical records of the plant have been made, with outlying wild populations north to Venezuela, Guyana and Trinidad and south to northwestern Argentina^{[1, 5]}. It was first described under the name Franciscea uniflora and moved into the genus Brunfelsia in 1829^{[1, 5]}. The species name uniflora means "one-flowered".

The genus name honors Otto Brunfels (c. 1488 to 1534), a German monk who became a physician and botanist^{[7, 8]}. His illustrated herbal Herbarum vivae eicones, "Living Pictures of Herbs" (1530), set realistic drawings of plants beside the text and helped move the study of plants from medieval herb lore toward modern science; Linnaeus called him one of the founders of modern botany^[7].

In Brazil, manacá is valued as a garden shrub and a potted flower for its scent and its changing colors^{[3, 4]}, and it is now grown in gardens across the tropics^{[1, 6]}. Its popular name, manacá-de-cheiro, "scented manacá", points to the fragrance that is part of its charm^{[3, 5]}. In folk tradition, though, it is the leaves, root and stem, not the flowers, that have been used^{[12, 13]}. By the 1890s the root and stem had reached the United States, where King's American Dispensatory (1898) described them under the name manaca^[13].

Traditional uses

Manacá has been little studied in people. Its place in folk tradition rests on its leaves, root and stem, while the flowering shrub is loved in gardens.

• Joint and muscle comfort

  In Brazilian folk practice, manacá leaves have traditionally been used for joint comfort^[12], and 19th-century American herbal texts described the root and stem for the muscles and tendons^[13]. Manacá has a long traditional use for joint and muscle comfort.*

• A garden favorite

  Across the tropics the shrub is planted for its flowers, which open purple and turn white, so that fresh and older blooms of different colors sit side by side.^{[1, 2, 3]}

• A scented shrub

  The flowers have a sweet fragrance that gives the plant its Brazilian name, manacá-de-cheiro.^{[2, 3]}

Plant compounds

Like many members of the nightshade family, manacá contains alkaloids^{[6, 11, 13]}. Among them is brunfelsamidine, a compound found across the Brunfelsia genus^{[8, 9]}.