VassourinhaScoparia dulcis

Did you know?

• Vassoura is Portuguese for broom, so vassourinha is a "little broom." Its bushy stems are bundled into simple brooms for sweeping floors^{[3, 4, 7]}.

• Chew a leaf and it tastes bitter at first, then sweet, which suits its English name, sweet broom^{[3, 4]}.

• It was long classed in the figwort family, Scrophulariaceae, and some references still list it there. Botanists now place it in the plantain family, Plantaginaceae^{[1, 2, 3, 5]}.

• From its home in the Americas, vassourinha has traveled as a weed to West Africa, India, Vietnam and the islands of the Pacific^{[1, 3, 4]}.

• It can live for a single season like an annual, or carry on for a few years as a small, slightly woody perennial^{[1, 4]}.

• Several of its plant compounds carry its name: chemists have isolated scopadulcic acids and scoparic acids from it^{[3, 5]}.

Origins and history

Vassourinha is an upright, many-branched herb, usually 25 to 80 centimeters (10 to 30 inches) tall, and often a little woody at the base^{[3, 4]}. Its small, toothed leaves grow in pairs or whorls along the stems, and it carries many tiny white flowers^{[3, 5]}. It thrives in open, disturbed ground: cultivated fields, waste places, sandy stream banks and the edges of settlements. It is mainly a lowland plant, found from sea level up to about 800 meters (2,600 feet)^{[3, 4]}.

Carl Linnaeus described the plant in his Species Plantarum of 1753^{[1, 2]}. Its native range covers the tropical and subtropical Americas, where Kew records it from the Caribbean and Central America to Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, Brazil and northern Argentina^[1]. From there it has spread through the tropics as a weed, and it now grows across Africa, South and Southeast Asia and the Pacific islands^{[1, 3, 4, 6]}.

The plant's names point to brooms and to sweetness. In Brazil it is vassourinha, from vassoura, "broom"^{[5, 6, 7]}. Other Brazilian names include vassourinha-doce, "sweet little broom", tupixava and tapixaba^[8], and in Guarani it is typycha kuratu^[5]. Spanish speakers call it escobilla, and in English it is sweet broom, sweet broomweed or licorice weed^{[3, 5, 6]}. The plant has a small place in everyday life, too: soaked overnight in water, its seeds make a cooling drink, and people put bunches of the branches into drinking water in the belief that it keeps the water cool^[4].

Traditional uses

Clinical studies of vassourinha in people are still few, but its traditional use is rich, reaching from Brazil to India^{[4, 5]}.

• A simple herbal tea

  The leaves or the whole plant are steeped in hot water, or simmered as a decoction, then strained and taken warm^{[4, 5]}.

• Digestive comfort

  In Brazil and elsewhere in the tropics, vassourinha tea has traditionally been taken for the stomach. Vassourinha supports digestive comfort.*^{[4, 5]}

• Respiratory health

  In Brazil and across South and Southeast Asia, the plant has a long tradition of use for the airways. Vassourinha supports respiratory health.*^{[4, 5]}

• Healthy glucose metabolism

  Vassourinha supports healthy glucose metabolism.*^{[4, 5]}

Plant compounds

Vassourinha contains naturally occurring plant compounds called diterpenes, including scopadulcic acids A and B and the scoparic acids^{[3, 5]}. It also contains triterpenes, flavonoids and a compound called amellin^{[3, 4, 5]}.