Lagerstroemia speciose

Boost your immune system, sooth your toothache and heal your wounds.These are just some of the healing effects of the medicinal plant Kraol growing in Prey Lang. The plant’s many diverse purposes makes it an important home remedy for the people living in Prey Lang.

One of the great properties of Kraol is, that it boosts the immune system and stimulates appetite. This is often needed for women after giving birth. The women drink a tea that they make from boiling the bark of Kraol. This tea can also cure your stomachache or diarrhea.

The plant is also very beneficial if you have a toothache. To sooth the pain, the people in Prey Lang boil the bark with salt and then use the mixture as a mouthwash.

But it is not only the bark of the plant you can use as medicine.  The fruit as well has great beneficial effects. By dissolving the fruit in rice wine and mixing it with extracts from the medicinal plant Terminalia chebula, you can create a mixture that can cure burned skin. You can also make a cream from the flesh of the fruit that you can apply to your skin, if you have skin rashes.

Lastly, people in Prey Lang also chew the young leaves of the plant and apply the paste on their skin to get rid of black varicose veins.

The Kraol plant is just one of the many medicinal plants that have great value to the people living in Prey Lang. But as the forest is being cut down, the medicinal plants, along with many other rare plant species, disappear as well.

Help us raise awareness about our cause to save Prey Lang, by sharing this post (link below) on Facebook with hashtag #stopthecut.