Traditionally used for
- Digestion
- Bowel health
- Skin
Cautions & contraindications
- Diabetes
☯ TCM Properties
Dispels Heat, promotes diuresis, removes toxins and controls bleeding
Traditional Chinese Uses
Mu Mian Hua (Flos Gossampini) is the dried flower of the red silk-cotton or kapok tree, Bombax ceiba. Sweet, bland and cool, entering the Large Intestine channel, it clears Heat, drains Dampness, cools the Blood and resolves toxicity. Its chief use is for damp-heat patterns of the intestines: diarrhea, dysentery with blood and mucus, and bleeding hemorrhoids, where it both clears Heat and checks discharge.
In southern China, and especially Guangdong, the flowers are a signature ingredient of cooling summer "five-flower" herbal teas and dampness-dispelling soups taken to relieve summerheat, damp accumulation and mild digestive upset. It may also be applied to heat-toxin sores. Mild in action, it is usually decocted as a food-grade beverage rather than given as a strong medicinal, and it is used cautiously in those with Spleen-Stomach Cold and loose stools from deficiency.
Western Herbalism Properties
Relationships
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Botanical Description
Bombax ceiba L. (Malvaceae), commonly known as the red silk cotton tree or kapok, is a large deciduous tree reaching 25-40 m in height, with a buttressed trunk armed with conical prickles when young. The bark is grey, and branches are arranged in horizontal whorls. Leaves are palmately compound with 5-7 lanceolate to elliptic leaflets, each 10-20 cm long, with entire margins and acuminate tips. The striking flowers appear before the leaves in late winter to early spring, are solitary or clustered at branch tips, and possess five thick, fleshy, recurved red to orange-red petals 8-15 cm long surrounding a dense brush of numerous stamens. The fruit is an oblong woody capsule that splits to release seeds embedded in abundant silky white floss. Native to tropical Asia, it is widely distributed in southern China, India, and Southeast Asia.
Active Constituents
Mangiferin
C-glucosyl xanthoneThe signature xanthone of the drug, isolated from the flower along with its isomer isomangiferin and 7-O-methylmangiferin from the 70% methanolic extract. Being C-glycosylated it survives gut glycosidases intact but is poorly absorbed. It is the constituent most often credited with the antioxidant and glucose-lowering activity attributed to Bombax ceiba, although the in vivo diabetes work with mangiferin used the leaf rather than the flower.
Isomangiferin and 7-O-methylmangiferin
C-glucosyl xanthoneThe two mangiferin congeners identified in the flower alongside mangiferin. Together the three xanthones are the most chemically distinctive feature of Mu Mian Hua and are the best candidates for a chromatographic identity marker.
Quercetin and its 3-O-glucoside and 3-O-glucuronide
Flavonol and flavonol glycosidesPart of the set of ten flavonoids isolated from B. ceiba flowers. Quercetin was also among the compounds identified in the ethyl acetate fraction that carried the strongest antioxidant and alpha-glucosidase inhibitory activity of the flower.
Rutin
Flavonol glycosideOne of the flavonoids isolated from the flower. It contributes to the flavonoid content, which varies markedly with solvent: ethyl acetate extracts of the flower carried roughly 392 mg rutin equivalents per gram of extract against about 182 mg for ethanol and 189 mg for water.
Vitexin, isovitexin and vicenin-2
Flavone C-glycosidesApigenin C-glycosides isolated from the flower. As with mangiferin, the C-linkage makes them resistant to hydrolysis, so they pass through decoction and digestion largely unchanged.
Kaempferol 3-O-rutinoside and kaempferol 3-O-glucuronide
Flavonol glycosidesTwo of the ten flavonoids characterised from the flower, together with sexangularetin 3-O-sophoroside.
Scopoletin, esculetin, fraxetin and scopolin
CoumarinsFour coumarins identified in the methanolic flower extract. They are simple hydroxy- and methoxy-coumarins with no anticoagulant 4-hydroxycoumarin structure, so their presence does not imply a warfarin-like effect.
Gallic acid
Phenolic acidOne of the twenty-four phenolic acids dominating the ethyl acetate fraction of the flower in UPLC-Q-TOF-MS profiling, and part of the polyphenol pool responsible for its radical-scavenging activity.
Epicatechin
Flavan-3-olIdentified in the ethyl acetate fraction of the flower alongside gallic acid and quercetin, the fraction with the strongest measured antioxidant, alpha-glucosidase inhibitory and cytotoxic activity.
⚠ Drug Interactions
Acarbose and other alpha-glucosidase inhibitors
The ethyl acetate fraction of Bombax ceiba flower inhibited alpha-glucosidase in vitro, the same enzyme acarbose targets, and UPLC-Q-TOF-MS with network analysis identified phenolic acids and flavonoids in that fraction as the likely actives. The supporting in vivo diabetes data for this species, in which hydroalcoholic extract at 200 and 400 mg/kg and mangiferin at 20 mg/kg lowered glucose and HbA1c in streptozotocin-diabetic rats, used Bombax ceiba leaf, not the flower, so it should not be read as evidence for this drug. There is no human glycaemic study of the flower at all.
Clinical note: Do not treat Mu Mian Hua as a hypoglycaemic agent, but ask a diabetic patient using it regularly about postprandial symptoms and gastrointestinal upset, and take a fasting glucose rather than assuming the herb is metabolically inert.
Proprietary Lingnan herbal teas and cooling drinks containing Mu Mian Hua
Mu Mian Hua is a standard ingredient of the southern Chinese damp-dispelling flower teas, most familiarly the five-flower tea, and of the bottled cooling drinks and dried soup packs sold across Guangdong. A patient in that food culture may already be taking substantial daily quantities of the flower before any prescription is written, and will not report a tea as a medicine.
Clinical note: Ask specifically about herbal teas, soup packs and bottled cooling drinks when prescribing this herb to a patient of southern Chinese background, and count that intake before setting a decoction dose.
Bombax ceiba bark (Mu Mian Pi) or root (Mu Mian Gen) dispensed for the flower
Bombax ceiba yields several distinct drugs, and the bark has a separate long history as an astringent and tonic for digestive complaints, while the flower is the damp-heat drug. Their constituent profiles differ, with mangiferin, lupeol and beta-sitosterol described from the stem bark and root and the xanthone-plus-flavonoid profile above from the flower. Much of the pharmacological literature indexed under Bombax ceiba, and under the synonym Bombax malabaricum, concerns leaf, bark or root.
Clinical note: Check which plant part any Bombax ceiba study extracted before applying it to this drug, and note that Bombax malabaricum DC. and Gossampinus malabarica are synonyms of the same tree, whereas the Latin name Flos Gossampini has nothing to do with cotton, Gossypium.
Dosage
| Form | Amount | Frequency | Duration | Population | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| decoction | 6–9 g | Daily | — | — | 中国药典 2020 monograph 【木棉花】【用法与用量】6～9g。 【性味与归经】甘、淡，凉。归大肠经。 — Matched to ChP by romanised drug name (pinyin 'Mu Mian Hua' → 木棉花); the romanisation is unique across all 649 ChP monographs, and the match was cross-checked against this record's own TCM temperature. Quoted verbatim. |
Evidence Tier
Limited evidence · 2 studiesRecorded studies by study design, strongest design at the top. This is a study-design tier only, not a GRADE rating: it does not weigh risk of bias, consistency or precision.
Systematic review / meta-analysis
0
Randomized controlled trial
0
Other clinical trial
0
Observational / case report
0
In vitro / animal
2
0 verified · 2 unverified
Show 2 studies
- A preliminary study of the chemical composition and bioactivity of Bombax ceiba L. flower and its potential mechanism in treating type 2 diabetes mellitus using ultra-performance liquid chromatography quadrupole-time-flight mass spectrometry and network pharmacology analysis
- Polyphenol Content, Antioxidant, Cytotoxic, and Genotoxic Activities of Bombax ceiba Flowers in Liver Cancer Cells Huh7
Other / unclassified
0
Verified: design read from PubMed for a DOI that resolves to the cited paper Unverified: taken from the study's recorded description
Clinical Studies
A preliminary study of the chemical composition and bioactivity of Bombax ceiba L. flower and its potential mechanism in treating type 2 diabetes mellitus using ultra-performance liquid chromatography quadrupole-time-flight mass spectrometry and network pharmacology analysis
Fractions of Bombax ceiba flower were profiled by UPLC-Q-TOF-MS and tested for antioxidant capacity, alpha-glucosidase and acetylcholinesterase inhibition and cytotoxicity. The ethyl acetate fraction was the most active and carried thirty-eight compounds, twenty-four phenolic acids and six flavonoids, including gallic acid, epicatechin, quercetin and mangiferin. All the bioactivity here is enzyme and cell assay plus network prediction; no animal or human diabetes work on the flower supports it.
Polyphenol Content, Antioxidant, Cytotoxic, and Genotoxic Activities of Bombax ceiba Flowers in Liver Cancer Cells Huh7
Polyphenol-rich extracts of B. ceiba flower were assayed for antioxidant activity and for cytotoxic and genotoxic effects in the Huh7 hepatoma line. The genotoxicity endpoint is worth noting for a plant eaten as a food and drunk daily as tea: any cytotoxic finding in a cell line is a signal to characterise, not a therapeutic claim, and there is no in vivo toxicology of the flower to set against it.
Historical Texts
Sheng Cao Yao Xing Bei Yao
Qing dynasty, 1711 CELing Nan Cai Yao Lu
Republican period, 1932References
- Joshi KR, Devkota HP, Yahara S. Chemical Analysis of Flowers of Bombax ceiba from Nepal . Natural Product Communications (2013) [DOI]
- Kumari N, Radha, Puri S, Kumar M, Natta S, Dhumal S, Raman P, Rajalingam S, Singh J. Exploring the Therapeutic Potential of Bombax ceiba L. Flowers as Source of Functional Food Development: A Review . Chemistry & Biodiversity (2025) [DOI]
- Law S, Lo C, Han J, Leung AW, Xu C. Is the Traditional Chinese Herb "Bombax Malabaricum" a Natural Anticancer Medicine? . Journal of Pharmacopuncture (2022) [DOI]
- Bhargava S, Shah MB. Evaluation of efficacy of Bombax ceiba extract and its major constituent, mangiferin in streptozotocin (STZ)-induced diabetic rats . Journal of Complementary and Integrative Medicine (2020) [DOI]
This information is for educational purposes only and is not intended to replace professional medical advice. Always consult a qualified healthcare provider before using any herbal remedy, especially if you are pregnant, nursing, or taking medications.
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