Viewing comments posted by greene

In Southeast Asia this plant is often seen growing in the kitchen garden. The young leaves are harvested and used to flavor rice, iced tea, and hot tea. Chicken wrapped in the leaves takes on the aroma. Sweet desserts, such as ice cream or sherbet, take on the aroma as well as the green coloring from the leaves. Sometimes the leaves are folded into a rose shape (similar in appearance to our Palmetto Rose) or other shapes and hung inside the home or in vehicles as an air freshener and to repel insects, such as cockroaches. The plant prefers some shade and cannot tolerate temperatures below 30 degrees F. The plant is not a "houseplant," however, and must be treated with respect to overwinter indoors successfully.
This domesticated plant is believed to be sterile and must be vegetatively propagated.

I received this plant as a Nga-Chang and found no joy in researching by that name. Once armed with the botanical name, I was able to back-track and found that Nga-Chang translates to 'one ivory', indicating that the plant looks like one ivory tusk of an elephant.

This is a Southeast Asian culinary vegetable having very shiny, heart-shaped leaves. It has no official English common name, but is sometimes called 'wild betel leaf.' It prefers to grow in damp shade, a trailing groundcover plant. Piperales order; Piperaceae family. In Thai it is chaphlu/ cha phlu/cha pluu/cha pluey.

The use of the common name may cause this plant to be confused with Piper betle/Betel Pepper/Paan which is a climbing plant.