gumamela

When I was a kid, my Grandmama has a Gumamela plant beside our house. It has lots of flowers where I used to pick and put them on my basket everyday. Sometimes she would get mad at me coz she doesn’t want to see the shrub without any flowers. So my cousin and I used to hide from her and picked them without her seeing us.... I would sometimes smile whenever I remember these scenarios for it was a part of my life of being a kid, somehow…..

A sure thing that everyone knows what is a Gumamela, right? They’re rarely can be seen now on some areas but if you’ll notice these flowers, you can barely appreciate them because of their color and its typical form as a flower. But I often wonder why these Gumamela’s doesn’t have any scent… hmmm….

A Hisbiscus or a Gumamela has an alternate and ovate leaves with a toothed margin. The flowers are large usually trumpet-shaped with five or more petals. They come in white to pink, red, purple, or yellow. Oftentimes, this kind of shrubs is used for landscaping. It is also known as a China Rose and Shoeflower. Here in the Philippines , Gumamela is cultured as an ornamental plant. As an herbal medicine, the Gumamela flower, leaves and roots are usually used. It has the following medicinal characteristics such as expectorant, diuretic, emollient, anti-infectious, anti-inflammatory, antipyretic, anodyne and refrigerant.

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