Description: Annual, much-branched herb 90-120 cm tall; stems glabrous. Leaves 6-10 cm long, 3.5-5 cm broad, elliptic-lanceolate, apically acute or acuminate, glabrous, serrate, the lower serratures on each side prolonged into a filiform appendage over 6 mm long, rounded at the base, 3-5 nerved; petioles 2-2.5 cm long, slightly pubescent, especially towards the apex; atipules subulate, 6-10 mm long. Flowers pale yellow; bracts lanceolate; peduncle shorter than the petiole; pedicles 1-3, very short. Sepals ca 3 mm long, oblong, apiculate. Petals 5 mm long, oblong spathulate. Style short; stigma microscopically papillose. Capsules 3-6.5 cm long, linear, cylindric erect, beaked, glabrous, 10-ribbed, 5-valved; valves with transverse partitions between the seeds. Seeds trigonous, black (Kirtikar and Basu, 1975).

Uses: While perhaps better known as a fiber crop, jute is also a medicinal "vegetable", eaten from Tanganyika to Egypt. They are used in soups under the Arabic name "Molukhyia." In India the leaves and tender shoots are eaten. The dried material is there known as "nalita." Injections of olitoriside markedly improve cardiac insufficiencies and have no cumulative attributes; hence, it can serve as a substitute for strophanthin.

Culture: Cut plants are tied into bundles, left to dry 2-4 days and shed their leaves. The jute is retted usually in stagnant water. After retting, the bundles are beat on the root end with a mallet to start the fibers which are wrapped around the fingers and the stems are jerked back and forth in the water to separate the fibers.

Poisonous Plant Parts - Not for Human Consumption
Contains HCN and several cardiac glycosides. Negm et al (1980) report the LD50 of tissue extracts to mice. The "lethal dose" of Corchoroside A to cats is 0.053-0.0768 mg/kg and Corchoroside B 0.059-0.1413, but some authors say that Corchoroside A is twice as active as Corchoroside B.
Potentially Invasive Plant - Plants are not to leave Greenhouse!

James A. Duke. 1983. Handbook of Energy Crops. unpublished. Adapted from New Crops Website at Purdue - last visited 04/19/02

Malvaceae

Subfamily Bombacoideae Tribe Adansonieae