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Turi (Sesbania grandiflora)

Turi or vegetable hummingbird or hummingbird tree or Aeschynomene grandiflora or Agati grandiflora (Sesbania grandiflora) is a small tree member of Fabaceae. This soft-wooded and short-lived tree has a height of 5 meters to 12 meters and speckled roots are useful for fertilizing the soil.

S. grandiflora has large flowers, comes out of the twigs, is shaped like a butterfly when it blooms and is white or red or a combination of both. Generally two to four flowers hang, stem and sickle shaped buds.

Dlium Turi (Sesbania grandiflora)

Wood has brownish outer skin, uneven with irregular and longitudinal grooves with a layer of cork that is easily peeled off. The inner wood is slimy, runny, red and bitter taste. Branching only comes out when it reaches 5 meters.

Turi has compound and scattered leaves. Leaves are 1 cm to 2 cm long. The leaves are elongated, flat surface, and even pinnate. The length of the stalks is 20-30 cm. The stalk is short and contains 20-40 pairs of minor leaves.

The fruit is pod-shaped, hanging, insulated, 20-55 cm long, when the shoots are green and after old are whitish yellow. Seeds are elliptical and light brown. This tree is cultivated from seeds sown to germinate up to 80%, but sometimes it also uses stem cuttings.

In Indonesia, S. grandiflora is planted as an ornamental plant in the yard, in the rice fields as a protective plant and a propagation tree for pepper or vanilla plants. Turi can also live on acidic soil, but it is difficult to grow at altitudes of more than 1,500 meters above sea level.



Culinary

Young leaves, flowers and pods are served as vegetables after boiling first. Young leaves are slimy, but good for mothers to add milk. Flowers and pods have savory and sweet flavors favored by Javanese and are generally served with peanut porridge sauce.

Traditional medicine

Bark is squeezed in water or boiled and water is taken to treat thrush, dysentery, blood pressure, diarrhea and emetics. High tannins are used for wound healing, overcoming inflammation, bruising and swelling.

Traditional Javanese medicine also uses Turi to treat intestinal inflammation, scabies, chickenpox, sprains, vaginal discharge, coughing, beriberi, headaches, sore throat, postpartum fever, breast milk production, mucous nose, coughing and rheumatism.

This plant sap is an astringent containing agatin, zantoagatin, basorin, and tannin. Seeds have 70% protein and leaves contain harmless saponins and generally as a substitute for soap for washing clothes.

The flowers contain variable sugar content and a source of vitamin B. All parts of this plant are reported to cure night blindness. Roots contain active ingredients as anti-tuberculosis to treat Mycobacterium tuberculosis. These ingredients include acid betulinat and three types of isoflavanoids.

Tanner and dye

Turi secretes lymph which will harden into gum when exposed to air. Gom is used in food, paper adhesives, various coloring crafts and building wood preservatives.

Animal feed

The leaves are used for animal feed and green manure. Turi is a forage feed favored by ruminants and of high nutritional value. Every 100 g of dry weight of leaves contains about 36% crude protein and 9600 IU of vitamin A. N concentrations in leaves are around 3.0–5.5% and seeds up to 6.5%.

The crude fiber content in the leaves is around 5-18%) and although it contains saponins and tannins, so far there are no toxic reactions that occur in ruminants. But the use of monogastric animals needs to be careful, because this feed can kill chickens.

Paper material

Turi wood mixed with bamboo can be processed into paper. For rotations planting 3 to 4 years produces more raw cellulose material per unit area compared to other pulp-producing wood species.

But turi fiber is short, so it needs to be mixed in sufficient proportions with longer bamboo fibers to produce stronger paper. Turi wood porridge is used to make lower middle-class paper including newsprint, magazines, writing paper or for cheap printed goods.

Natural pesticides

Turi is favored by endol beetles (Mylabris putulata) which will repel woody grasshoppers (Valanga nigricornis zehntneri) which attack coconut, banana and cypress plants. Adult endolite beetles like turi flowers, while larvae will eat wooden grasshopper eggs.

Kingdom: Plantae
- : Angiosperms
- : Eudicots
- : Rosids
Order: Fabales
Family: Fabaceae
Genus: Sesbania
Species: S. grandiflora
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