Love Potion #9

My mum's a huge fan of alternative medicine, and all things herby. So when a Malay friend of hers informed her that a common garden weed had amazing properties in preventing urinary tract infection (more effective than cranberry juice, apparently), I found her in the garden weeding. But not for the purpose of removing house-plant-choking wild grasses.

She was only picking out these particular weeds in stashing them into a little plastic container for later use:


Looks familiar? As far as I remember, these plants grow literally everywhere where there's a little dirt or soil, with damp places with sufficient moisture (which means just about anywhere here in humid Malaysia).

With smallish heart-shaped leaves, fleshy stems, and green flowering stalks dotted with what I assume is the pollen, these weeds can grow to surprisingly robust sizes - I've seen specimens up to almost 30cm tall before, growing in the fertile dirt next to drains, or even in flower-pots.

The ones my mum managed to collect were all small and straggly. A rather blatant testament to her green thumb - even weeds cannot flourish in her garden HAHAHA.

Anyway, I wasn't aware of her plan to boil it into a decoction for testing on me as a guinea pig (I seem to be pretty prone to urinary tract infection, due to my tendency not to consume enough liquids) until she'd cooked up a huge potful of it. And when she tried coaxing me to drink it I feigned exhaustion and promptly fell asleep on my favourite sofa with Cookie.

An hour later I was shaken awake by Mrs. Chan and informed that dinner was ready. Still semi-conscious, I walked into the kitchen on auto-pilot. On the way there, I was handed a glass of water by mummy dearest.

Blindly, I took a big gulp of it.

And spluttered.

And almost choked on the greenish-yellow liquid in the glass.

How cunning of her to trick me into drinking her newest miracle cure!

Urgh!

And it wouldn't even be the first time she did something like this to me. Why am I still so gullible... =(

It wasn't at all unpleasant, to be honest, quite tasteless in fact, with a mild, herby, earthy, almost aromatic fragrance that would've been quite acceptable if I didn't know that I was consuming weed-water.

Anyway, if anyone wants to try this traditional herbal remedy for UTI, do keep in mind not to harvest plants that might have been exposed to chemicals, ie. pesticides, herbicides, or chemical fertilizers. It might kill you instead of cure you. And if you really do try it, let me know some feedback on its effectiveness - I'm really curious to know!

Oh, and does anyone know the name of this plant? Scientific, common, or Malay name, anyone?