Please Open The Website From Desktop

Close
  • COMMON NAME: Gems of the hills
  • ARABIC: الخنصور
  • BOTANICAL NAME: Desmidorchis arabicus (N. E. Br.) Meve & Liede
  • SYNONYMS: Caralluma arabica N.E. Br.
  • FAMILY: ASCLEPIADACEAE
  • KIND: Native
  • EMIRATE: Abu-Dhabi , Sharjah , Fujairah
  • CATEGORIES: Medicinal (M) Fruits (F)
  • GROWTH FORMS: Succulent
  • HABITATS: Slope (Rocky) Slope (Stony)
  • TYPES: Annual
  • REMARKS: Wadi Wurayah National Park (WWNP).
Flora of the United Arab Emirates V1 & 2, Fawzi M.Karim, Nael M.Fawzi; reviewed by Fatima Al-Ansary. Al-Ain: United Arab Emirates University, 2007. Encyclopedia of medicinal plants of UAE 1&2 from Zayed complex for herbal Research & traditional medicine, AD. Gary R. Feulner. 2014. The Flora of Wadi Wurayah National Park Fujairah, United Arab Emirates.
In the UAE, the twigs of these plants are sold in the markets, and the twigs are eaten fresh or cooked. The flowers are also eaten and have a distinctive and sweet taste. The plant is a diuretic, useful for liver diseases, diabetes, blood pressure, and the flowers quench thirst, and the soft fruits are eaten. The plant is also used to calm and soothe pain and wounds, treat burns, itchy skin, and heat stroke, and the juice from the stems is drunk as a general tonic in convalescence.

Ascending or erect, much-branched succulent to 30-80 cm, leafless stem, grey, quadrangular, the angles rather blunt, obscurely toothed, much scarred. Flowers in dense clussters at the tips of the branches, dark red brown, glabrous except for the tip of the lobes, which bear a tuft of brown vibratile hairs. Fruit follicle, 10 cm long, erect, gray green, separated from the base. Seeds many, glabrous, dark brown with a tuft of long hairs at tip.

Flowering from January to June.
Found on the escarpment from Jabal Hafeit to Northern Emirates.