Erythrina mulungu – bark, tincture 30 ml

MULUNGU is a word of Tupi origin (derived from mussungu) and means “tambourine” (a type of hand frame drum popular in Brazil.) This name comes from the sound emitted by the beating on its hollow trunk. It is a medium-sized, well-branched tree that grows to 10-14 m tall. It produces a profusion of pretty, reddish flowers (pollinated by hummingbirds) at the ends of the tree’s many branches. The tree is sometimes called “coral flower” since the flowers resemble the color of orange coral. Indigenous people use the large red and black seeds  to make necklaces and jewelry.
Tribes in the Amazon of Brazil and Peru have long been using Mulungu as a natural sedative, to calm an overly agitated nervous system and promote restful sleep. In Brazil it grows all over the country, from the Central states to the plains of the North East where it grows abundantly and they harvest most of the commercially sold bark. It is a wonderful medicinal plant from South America that is little known, yet has already been the subject of extensive research.