Plant · P-902

Guduchi

Tinospora cordifolia

Guduchi is a fast-growing, deciduous, twining climber in the moonseed family, native to dry forests and low-elevation scrub across India, Sri Lanka and Myanmar, climbing to about 15 metres where it has support and rooting readily from any node it touches, including the aerial roots it drops in the wild. It wants full sun, will not grow in shade, and tolerates sandy, loamy or clay soil from mildly acid to mildly alkaline, kept dry to evenly moist with good drainage; hardy only where winters stay essentially frost-free, roughly zone 10 and warmer. The stem is a long-standing Ayurvedic tonic, taken as a bitter leaf tea and valued as an alterative, febrifuge, diuretic and general immune tonic, with a medicinal rating among the highest in its reference database; the aerial roots also serve as cordage. Case reports since 2020 link supplement-form use to a rare, idiosyncratic, apparently immune-mediated liver injury with a median onset around 46 days after starting use, and the closely related Tinospora crispa, sometimes confused with it by leaf shape, is separately documented to cause acute liver injury of its own.