Don't laugh, bignay is really 'hard' wood.

Don't laugh, bignay is really 'hard' wood.

Asia Africa Intelligence Wire

 | April 10, 2003 | Copyright

(From Philippine Daily Inquirer)

Byline: Mei Magsino

NASUGBU, Batangas -Here is good news for men who can't, shall we say, rise to the occasion.

From the lowly bignay tree that grows in the mountains and which farmers use for firewood, farmer Clarito Caisip, 43, has found a solution for erectile dysfunction: a herbal tea that could rival Viagra, but one without any side effects.

"A friend of mine, Cosmelito de la Cuesta, whom we call Happy, taught me to use bignay bark as herbal tea," Clarito said. "Later, I added the leaves, stem and wood of the bignay tree to make tea and gave some of it to friends who found the tea a refreshing drink."

When a 65-year-old male neighbor who was a widower came back to ask for more tea and told Clarito that, old as he was, there was renewed vigor in his sex life since he started drinking the concoction, Clarito knew he was on to something big.

"To tell you the truth, my old friend's experience is not new. I have also been experiencing a much stronger sexual vitality since I started drinking the bignay tea," Clarito said. "Some people laughed, but after laughing, they would ask for the tea."

Even Clarito's wife, Antonette, 53, claimed to enjoy renewed sexual vitality since drinking the tea. For one thing, she looks 20 years younger.

Doubts at first

But the couple admitted to having doubts at first about the bignay tea.

On Dec. 23 last year, Clarito started drinking the tea he formulated. He started gathering wood, stems, leaves and bark of the bignay tree and dried them outside their home in Camp Avejar, Barangay Lumbagan, in this town.

"Before, I was the only one who wanted to drink the tea," Clarito said. "Then our youngest son, Jairry, started drinking a liter every day. He even took the tea to school and drank it like water. Since then, he has been always adjudged as an A-1 child whose academic performance has also improved a lot."

Then Antonette followed her husband and son's practice and started drinking the bignay tea.

"I used to doubt the power of that tea because when I was a child, I thought that bignay was poisonous," Antonette said. "But later on, I learned that the female bignay, not the male, is poisonous. And my husband has been using the male bignay tree for tea."

When she started drinking the tea, Antonette said she felt decades younger.

"And I always feel very happy and content," Antonette added.

Cure-all

"But the bignay tea doesn't work just to give you a renewed sex life," Antonette said, "It's also a cure-all. My father-in-law's arthritis was cured when he drank the tea for one month. Another female friend said her diabetes was cured since she started drinking the bignay tea."

Even Clarito's brother, Victoriano, 47, a mechanic who works in Italy and has arthritis, claimed to have been cured when he drank the bignay tea for two weeks straight.

Like Clarito, his addiction to alcohol was also cured.

In their one-and-a-half-hectare property, where different crops and trees grow, Clarito and Antonette also raise swine. But it is the tea that they are now known for.

"Since (we guested on TV shows), strangers would always wave at us and more people keep coming to our house to buy the tea," Antonette said.

When more people came to buy the tea, the couple decided to pack the dried ground mix into 50- and 100-gram packs.

Now, a 50-gram pack costs P50 while a 100-gram pack costs P100. A tablespoon of the dried bignay tea mix can produce six glasses of the tea.

Clarito and Antonette always carry an extra pack of the tea whenever they take the product to the market.

"What's also good in this tea is that it's pure herbal, with no side effects," Clarito said, "and it comes from all over the mountainous areas of the town; sometimes, the tree grows in the farms and backyards."

Preservation

Since Clarito sources the raw materials of his tea from the farmers who live in the mountains, he started the "Save the Bignay Tree" movement, in an effort to save the trees that some farmers used to cut down for firewood.

Since he met with all the members of the Samahan ng mga Magsasaka sa Kanlurang Batangas (Samakaba), a farmers' group that he now chairs, he taught his fellow farmers how to take care of the bignay trees and how to propagate them.

This coming rainy season, the group is planning to plant a thousand bignay seedlings in the mountains of Western Batangas.

"The campaign has also given the farmers a new source of income, while learning the uses of the bignay tree that sometimes grow even in their backyards," Clarito said, "and I don't have a false humility to say that we're just doing this to save the trees. We need it for business and to help the farmers get an alternative source of income."

Clarito said he used only the male bignay tree for the tea.

"The bark of the female bignay tree is poisonous. But the male bignay tree comes from its seeds. I have also learned to differentiate the two. The female tree bears fruits while the male does not," Clarito said.

The bignay tree (Antidesma bunius spreng) grows all over Southeast Asia, lower Himalayas in India, Sri Lanka and Australia and is abundant in the Philippines.

For years, its sour-sweet fruits have been eaten by children and adults. Some people even turn the fruits into jellies and jams.

In Indonesia and the Philippines, old folks eat the leaves in raw form or stewed with rice.

In Nasugbu, the bignay bark is boiled and its tea was used by the old folks to cure stomach pains.

But it was only Clarito who experimented with the mix of wood, leaves, bark and stems as tea. And the result is what his grateful clients describe as the local Viagra with no side effects.