Chakramuni, the Vitamin Plant

Chakramuni sounds such a sage, venerable old name for a plant that has such cuteness and modernist geometry to it. It’s even futurist: Darth Vader on a bush, we thought, and chuckled.

But such precision and such perfection of shape and form that make me think that some plants must just love trigonometry and minutiae while others prefer the grandest scales of architecture. I have my little, thriving Chakramuni thanks to Pratiba Bhat who sent me a cutting so long ago. Either from that or seed, the plant grows easily in all kinds of soil and even in pots; it’s one for balcony gardeners and other social Darwinist gardeners such as myself who often don’t have time to baby all the plants vying for attention in the garden.

In the rest of South East Asis, Chakramuni goes by “katuk,” Sauropus androgynus, thavasi keerai in Tamil, sweet leaf or the “vitamin plant” (vitamin soppu, Kannadigas call it)—which is another reason this seems a shrub for our modern times because it’s appears like a dietary supplement of the sort we take to balance out otherwise terribly burdened and destructive lifestyles. It is high in protein and fiber, with more potassium than your average banana and more phosphorous than soy beans. So high are the leaves in β-carotene (synthesizes Vitamin A), Vitamins B and C, protein, and several other minerals, no wonder the common moniker “vitamin plant” (see this).

Except we’ve learned, the hard way of course, that too much by way of vitamin supplement is about as damaging as a deficiency. Drinking copious quantities of katuk leaf juice was part of a weight-loss fad diet in Taiwan for a while there, and it landed folks in hospital with lung issues. Turns out Chakramuni also has papaverine, which can be of some use in improving blood flow in patients with circulation issues or regulating high blood pressure because it opens out those constricted blood vessels—but too much and it induces Bronchiolitis Obliterans.

Which is when Chakramuni’s ancient ways start to matter: eat all things, eat thousands of things, but always with knowledge, consciousness, and fair reserve. Grind some leaves into a chutney or make a tambuli or add them to a dal in a mix of other greens. A rough rule of thumb, based on informal recommendations of an Ayurveda practitioner: 2-4 stalks per person, fortnightly, in chutneys or dals. Cooking the greens makes them safer to consume, too, much more than powders/pills/supplements or raw salad additions. As with agathi greens which are consumed after dwadashi fasts (also fortnightly), these are ingredients to be eaten in regulated fashion. It’s a perennial, is one view, and perennials protect themselves with substances that are toxic to an bugs or others eating only the leaves of that plant, so it’s important to “eat like a goat,” grazing on all things and not making whole diets out of any single ingredient. There’s real power in the slow, the steady, the quotidian. That, really, is our way.

So Chakramuni leaves are more important than the fruits, but the tiny fruits and seeds are my focus because, well, cuteness overload! How can anyone resist those little pink bodies and red floral caps, the perfect geometry of the fruit as it splits to release seeds, curlicues which express flower-to-seed, such harmonious logic of form.

All this gave me pause, wonderment, the wish to stop time, breathe, take only still photos—a photostory compilation of which appears below—and those are vitamins, too, as important as any in a physical diet.

A Chakramuni “Vitamin Plant” Photostory