SAMWA

Cleome droserifolia:

The Samwa plants

Samwa (Cleome droserifolia) is one of the most popular medicinal herbs in Egypt and a common one to come across in the wadis of South Sinai, including around Dahab. It also has one of the most beautiful blooms. Samwa grows in rocky, gravelly, and sandy desert wadis and plains.

The cleome herb is called samwa in Arabic and is one of the most popular medicinal herbs in Egypt. It is an aromatic shrub growing up to 60 cm high. The plant is covered in glandular hairs that give off a distinct smell. The upper-side of the leaves are green and the underside is a lighter yellowish-green. Leaves are hairy and broadly egg-shaped. Flowers are yellow with pinkish filaments and are about 1 – 1.5 cm.

Samwa-Sinai-Go-tell-it-on-the-mountain_r

Why is Samwa healthy?

Used medicinally by local Bedouin people to treat bee stings, to cleanse internal and external infections on the skin or eyes of people and animals, and to treat diabetes, as it lowers blood sugar. Samwa is a small shrub that's common in lowland wadis. It has sticky leaves, with a menthol scent. The Bedouin often put it in hot water to use as mouthwash on the trail.

Samwa (سموا), known in English as Cleome Herb, is one of the most popular plants in Egypt and is in bloom now across south Sinai. You can´t miss samwa´s distinct aroma given off by the glandular and sticky hairs covering the plant. The plant is used medicinally for ailments ranging from bee stings and infections to diabetes.Used medicinally by local Bedouin people to treat bee stings, to cleanse internal and external infections on the skin or eyes of people and animals, and to treat diabetes, as it lowers blood sugar.

Samwa Nutrition

Organic extracts from Cleome droserifolia exhibit effective caspase-dependent anticancer activity and diabetes: tea and powder.

Facts

A review is given regarding the studies that have been carried out on the medicinal plant Cleome droserifolia, commonly known as spider flower. It covers the plant’s systematic, morphology, ecology and geographic distribution in Egypt. The target species is a perennial aromatic shrub of the family Cleomaceae that requires stony soil for growth, it’s distributed regionally in Egypt, Libya, Syria, Jordan and Palestine, in Egypt it appears in South Sinai, Red sea coast, the Oasis and Mediterranean coast. The review demonstrates several phytochemical properties of Cleome droserifolia (Forssk.) that revealed its antihyperglycemic, anticancer and antibacterial properties along with many terpenoids and flavonoids. Moreover, the herb Cleome droserifolia is wildly known in the Egyptian folk medicine for treating several fatigues and diseases. Therefore, C. droserifolia is under the stress of intensive harvesting for traditional medicine, trade and research use that has led to severe depletion of its population. This review is targeting the conservation ecology of Cleome droserifolia (Forssk.) through better understanding of the diversity of the species in a community or a region, ecosystem processes, temporal and spatial variability of its environment, historical contingency and evolutionary processes. Cleome droserifolia, one of the most valuable medicinal plants in Egypt that needs to be treasured.