Musanga cecropioides R. Br. ex Tedlie (family: Cecropiaceae) which is also known as the Umbrella Tree or Cork Wood is a tree used in the Gabonese traditional medicine for the treatment of various infectious and systemic diseases. It is a tropical plant of the jungle, especially in West Africa.

In herbal and ethnic medicine, the bark of this tree is soaked in gin where an ethanolic extract is created for treating the patient. It is an effective hypotensive especially for treating diarrhoea (Owolabi et al., 2010). Several researchers have demonstrated the scientific efficacy of the latex and the leaf extract as a vaso-relaxant, and therefore a hypotensive agent (Kamanyi et al., 1991) The water extract of the stem bark has been reported to produce a dose-dependent reduction in mean arterial BP, which fell by 4.51 ± 0.5 mmHg at the dose of 10 mg/kg and 65.23 ± 6.28 mmHg at 40 mg/kg dose (Adeneye et al.,  2006).

References

Adeneye, A.A., Ajagbonna, O.P., Mojiminiyi, F.B., Odigie, I.P., Ojobor, P.D., Etarrh, R.R., et al. (2006) The hypotensive mechanisms for the aqueous stem bark extract of Musanga cecropioides in Sprague-Dawley rats. J. Ethnopharmacol. 106 pp. 203-7.

Kamanyi, A., Bopelet, M., Aloamaka, C.P., Obiefuna, P.C., Ebeigbe, A.B. (1991) Endothelium-dependent rat aortic relaxation to the aqueous leaf extract of Musanga cecropioides. J. Ethnopharmacol. 34 pp. 283-6.

Owolabi, O.J., Ayinde, B.A., Nworgu, Z.A., Ogbonna, O.O. (2010) Antidiarrheal evaluation of the ethanol extract of Musanga cecropioides stem bark. Met. Find. Exp. Clin. Pharmacol. 32 pp. 407-11

Tchouya, G. R. F., & Nantia, E. A. (2015). Phytochemical analysis, antioxidant evaluation and total phenolic content of the leaves and stem bark of Musanga cecropioides R. Br. ex Tedlie (Cecropiaceae), growing in Gabon. J. Pharmacognosy and Phytochemistry, 3(5), pp. 192-195.