Apiaceae

Centella asiatica

Gotu kola · Brahmi · Indian pennywort

Trial support Caution

Part used: aerial
Native range: Wet tropical and subtropical regions of Asia, Africa and Australia
Morphology: A low creeping perennial of damp ground with rounded scalloped leaves on long stalks, spreading by runners, and tiny inconspicuous pinkish flowers hidden beneath the leaves.

What is in it

triterpene saponins asiaticoside, madecassoside, asiatic acid

Evidence

Among the better-evidenced traditional plants for a topical indication: titrated extract of Centella has trial support for wound healing, scarring and chronic venous insufficiency, and is used in registered products in France and elsewhere. Cognitive claims are much weaker.

Safety

Hepatotoxicity is reported, including cases requiring hospital care, and the EMA has noted it. Contact dermatitis from topical use. Sedation at higher oral doses.

Interactions: Additive sedation with CNS depressants; Additive liver risk

Regulatory: Permitted as a listed medicine ingredient in Australia; registered as a wound-healing product in some European markets.

How the traditions classify it

Chinese Ji xue cao — bitter and cold, used for heat and for damp.

Ayurvedic Bitter and sweet; cooling in potency. Also called brahmi in some regions, and used as a medhya rasayana for the mind.

Three systems, rating the same plant. Where they disagree, none of them is correcting the others — they are separate frameworks that arrived at their categories independently.

Historical use

Used across South and Southeast Asia and in Madagascar for wounds, skin conditions and, in Ayurveda, for the mind. Eaten as a leaf vegetable in Sri Lanka and Thailand.

Recorded as history and attributed where possible. Long use establishes that a plant was widely used, not that it worked, and not that it was safe.

Worth knowing

Gotu kola is the other brahmi, and confusing it with Bacopa monnieri is one of the more consequential name collisions in the herbal market — two families, two chemistries, two different sets of evidence, sold under one Sanskrit name.

Its own best evidence is for something the cognitive marketing ignores entirely. Titrated Centella extract has genuine trial support for wound healing and for venous insufficiency, and is a registered medicine in parts of Europe for exactly that. The asiaticosides stimulate collagen synthesis, which is a mechanism that fits the traditional wound use precisely and has nothing to do with memory.

Nomenclature verified against GBIF backbone taxonomy.