Phyllanthaceae
Phyllanthus emblica
Amla · Amalaki · Indian gooseberry
- Part used
- fruit
- Native range
- India and Southeast Asia
- Morphology
- A small deciduous tree to eighteen metres with feathery arrangements of small leaves and pale green translucent fruit, hard and very sour, with six vertical furrows.
- Also known as
- Emblica officinalis
What is in it
Evidence
Small trials report modest lipid-lowering and antioxidant effects. Triphala as a whole has more studies than amla alone, mostly small and mostly from India.
Safety
Eaten as a food across South Asia and well tolerated. High tannin content can reduce iron absorption. Theoretical antiplatelet activity.
Interactions: Possible additive with anticoagulants; May reduce absorption of iron and some drugs
Regulatory: Permitted as a food and as a listed medicine ingredient.
How the traditions classify it
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
Central to Ayurveda for two thousand years, and one of the three components of triphala, the most widely used compound preparation in the tradition. Also sacred in Hindu practice, with the tree venerated.
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
Amla is routinely described as extraordinarily high in vitamin C, and the figure quoted is usually far too high. Fresh fruit contains a substantial amount — a good deal more than an orange — but the very large numbers in circulation come from assays that measure total reducing capacity rather than ascorbic acid specifically. Amla is exceptionally rich in tannins, which reduce those assays and inflate the apparent result.
The genuine finding underneath is more interesting: its tannins appear to stabilise what vitamin C is present, so amla preparations lose it more slowly than most fruit. The claim is real; the number is an artefact of how it was measured.
Nomenclature verified against GBIF backbone taxonomy.