Distribution and habitat: It is found throughout the tropics and cultivated in homestead gardens. It is a large succulent aromatic perennial herb with its tomentose fleshy stem.

Botany: A perennial herb, shrubby below, hispidly villous or tomentose. Stem 30-90 cm long. 

• Leaves: Simple, opposite, broadly ovate, crenate and fleshy.
• Flowers: Pale purplish in dense whorls at distant intervals in a long slender raceme.
• Fruits: Orbicular or ovoid nutlets. Upper calyx lip ovate, acute, membranous, lower acuminate. Corolla pale purplish, tube short, throat inflated lips short. Stamens shortly exserted.

Properties:  Plant is hot, digestive, carminative, diuretic, anthelmintic, and constipating. It is antispasmodic, antilithic, cathartic, stimulant and stomachic.

Chemical constituents: Essential oil from plant contains carvacrol. Cirsimaritin and β-sitosterol-β-D-glucoside, oleanolic, pomolic, euscaphic, tormentic and ursolic acids; salvigenin, quercetin, chrysoeriol, luteolin, apigenin, eriodictyol, and taxifolin in leaves. 

Uses: The leaves are useful in cephalagia, nostalgia, anorexia, dyspepsia, flatulence, colic, diarrhoea, cholera, halitosis, convulsions, epilepsy, cough, asthma, hiccough, bronchitis, strangury, hepatopathy and malarial fever

Propagation: Stem cuttings.