Spilanthes acmella

spilanthes • pará cress

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Spilanthes acmella (L.) Murr. [= Spilanthes oleracea L., = Acmella oleracea (L.) R.K. Jansen] (Asteraceae); spilantus (Afrikaans); qian ri ju (Chinese); cresson de Para, spilanthe des potagers (French); Parakresse (German); spilante (Italian); agrião do Brasil, agrião do Pará (Portuguese)

DESCRIPTION Fresh leaves are soft, often flushed with purple and have a sweetish taste and a peculiar mouth-tingling and mild anaesthetic effect when eaten.

THE PLANT A weedy annual or short-lived perennial of up about 0.3 m (1 ft) in height, with solitary, yellow and maroon-coloured flower heads. A specific cultivar has been selected or developed in Brazil and is often referred to as Brazilian cress. This plant has been called S. acmella var. oleracea or S. acmella ‘Oleracea’ (it was formerly regarded as a separate species, S. oleracea).1,2 An alternative classification is in the genus Acmella, as Acmella oleracea.3 It is still commonly referred to in the literature as Spilanthes, the name under which is has become well known.2

ORIGIN The plant occurs as a cultigen in South America and is believed to be of Peruvian or Brazilian origin, developed from a wild relative, S. alba.3 It has become a popular culinary herb in almost all tropical parts of the world, including Africa, India, Southeast Asia and China.

CULTIVATION Plants are propagated from seeds sown in spring. It is an easy crop to grow with no particular requirements except that it is not adapted to cold.

HARVESTING Leaves are picked by hand as required. On Madagascar it is sold as a vegetable on fresh produce markets.2

CULINARY USES Young leaves are shredded and added to salads, to which they give a tingling and mouthwatering flavour. The plant is used on its own as a potherb and is often added to soups and stews. The name cress can be misleading because pará cress is unrelated to several other culinary herbs from the mustard family (Brassicaceae), such as garden cress (Lepidium sativum), land cress (Barbarea verna) and watercress (Nasturtium officinale). The pungency of these plants comes from mustard oils, which are chemically unrelated to the compounds in spilanthes.

FLAVOUR COMPOUNDS The tingling and anaesthetic sensation caused by spilanthes is due to spilanthol, the most abundant of at least eight N-alkylamides that have been identified in the leaves and especially in the mature flower heads of the plant, where they occur in their biggest concentration.4,5 Alkylamides are also found in sansho or Chinese pepper (Zanthoxylum species), used in East and Southeast Asia for a similar sensation in the mouth. The flower heads of spilanthes are referred to as “buzz buds” because of their powerful effect on taste buds. It has been shown that spilanthol can permeate the mucosa of the mouth.5 Experiments have been done to see how the interesting tingling effect, comparable perhaps to that of sherbet but much stronger, can be utilized in soft drinks and sweets.

NOTES Spilanthes is traditionally used as a toothache remedy and to stimulate the flow of saliva. It has interesting antibiotic effects and is poisonous to invertebrates but not to warm-blooded animals.

1. Mabberley, D.J. 2008. Mabberley’s plant-book (3rd ed.). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

2. Roemantyo, 1993. Spilanthes Jacquin. In: Siemonsma, J.S., Kasem, P. (Eds). Plant Resources of South-East Asia No 8. Vegetables. pp. 264–266. Pudoc Scientific Publishers, Wageningen, Netherlands.

3. Jansen, R.K. 1985. The systematics of Acmella (Asteraceae-Heliantheae). Systematic Botany Monographs 8. 115 pp.

4. Ramsewak, R.S., Erickson, A.J., Nair, M.G., 1999. Bioactive N-isobutylamides from the flower buds of Spilanthes acmella. Phytochemistry 51: 729–732.

5. Boonen, J., Baert, B., Burvenich, C., Blondeel, P., De Saeger, S., De Spiegeleer, B. 2010. LC-MS profiling of N-alkylamides in Spilanthes acmella extract and the transmucosal behaviour of its main bio-active spilanthol. Journal of Pharmaceutical and Biomedical Analysis 53: 243−249.