Trumpet Vine

 Blue Trumpet Vine, Laurel Clock Vine, Thunbergia laurifolia

A native to India,  it is a fast-growing ornamental vine with showy violet, white or blue trumpet-shaped flowers.  It is locally known as kar tuau in Malaysia and rang jeud in Thailand. Thunbergia laurifolia leaves are opposite, heart-shaped with serrated leaf margin and taper to a pointed tip. Flowers are not scented and borne on pendulous inflorescence. The hermaphrodite flower is trumpet-shaped with a short broad tube, white outside and yellowish inside. The corolla is pale blue in color with 5–7 petals, one larger than the others.

The plant flowers almost continuously throughout the year with flowers opening early in the morning and aborting in the evening of the same day. Carpenter bees are frequent visitors, creeping into the flowers for pollen and nectar while black ants are present probably as nectar scavengers. The plant develops a very tuberous root system.

  

In Malaysia, juice from crushed leaves of T. laurifolia are taken for menorrhagia, placed into the ear for deafness, and applied for poulticing cuts and boils. In Thailand, leaves are used as an antipyretic, as well as an antidote for detoxifying poisons. Several Thai herbal companies have started producing and exporting rang jeud tea. The tea has been claimed to be able to detoxify the harmful effects of drugs, alcohol and cigarettes.

 Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally. Make it the object of pursuit, and it leads us on a wild-goose chase, and is never attained. Follow some other object, and very possibly we may find that we have caught happiness without dreaming of it. 
~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

 

 

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