Luehea paniculata

Luehea paniculata Mart. & Zucc. (Malvaceae, formerly Tiliaceae), known as 'açoita-cavalo-do-cerrado', is a medium-sized deciduous tree 6–15 m tall native to the cerrado, semi-deciduous forests and gallery woodlands of central Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay and northern Argentina. The bark is greyish-brown, longitudinally fissured. Leaves are alternate, simple, ovate to oblong-elliptic, 6–14 cm long, with serrate margins, an oblique cordate base, prominent palmate-pinnate venation, and a finely stellate-pubescent underside. Flowers are showy, 2–3 cm across, with five white to pinkish-cream petals and numerous stamens, borne in large terminal panicles. The fruit is a woody, five-valved, oblong-cylindrical capsule 2.5–4 cm long, opening along the partitions to release small winged seeds. It grows on well-drained sandy to clayey soils in cerradão, gallery forest edges and seasonally dry forests. In Brazilian folk medicine the bark and leaves are widely used in decoctions and tinctures for diarrhoea, dysentery, bronchitis, leukorrhoea and inflammation.