Mengkudu - its scientific name that I found from a google search says that it's called by the name Morinda Citrifolia. It's planted at the back of my house about 2 or 3 years ago by my brother-in-law. Now, it's pretty big and provides shade for some of my smaller plants. You can see lemon grass (pokok serai) and pokok pandan beneath it.
I know that the leave is very useful. I used the leaves during my confinement period. For Malays, the confinement period is 44 days. After I gave birth to my son via caesarean, I used the leaves to help flatten my tummy fast. I'm sure you know just how huge and bulging the tummy can be for women who went through caesarean. Well, did it work? It surely did the magic!
Malay women also use this daun mengkudu to wrap the heated stone used for 'bertungku' (to shrink the uterus and break up blood clots) - which I did too. In my case, as I said, I used the leaves along with other traditional herbs and smeared them on my tummy twice per day through out the confinement period.
I'm not sure what we can do with the fruits. But I heard that mengkudu fruits are good antioxidant. The smell of the fruit? A bit yucky...... smells like vomit! That's why I never tried to taste the fruit. Heard that we can add honey and other fruits to help reduce the vomit smell! For more info on mengkudu's nutritious, you can refer to
http://www.orangkampung.com/atikal%20mengkudu.html.
I thought of tasting the fruit and so I picked several of them from the tree. Didn't have time then to try them out and totally forgot about them when we went 'balik kampung' (back to hometown) on Sunday. And guess how did the house smelled like when we got back home on Monday? Ya right! Eewwww!
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