GUARANA (Guarana)

Botanical name : Paullinia cupana HB & Kunth. Family: Sapindaceae

Synonym : Paullinia sorbiles Mart.

Common names : English: Brazilian cocoa; French: Guarana; German: Guarana past.

Description : A climbing herb. Leaves compound. Flowers yellow in panicles. Fruit a capsule, pear-shaped. 3-sided 3-celled with thin partitions seed like a small horse chestnut, half enclosed in aril which is easily separated when dried. Seeds sub-spherical; testa reddish-brown, shining about 11 to 12 mm by 10 to 8 mm, somewhat flattened at the base; exalbuminous with two sub- hemispherical starchy cotyledons.

Part used : Seed.

Macroscopical : Occurs as hard, heavy, sausage shaped masses form 10 to 30 cm long and 2.5 to 4 cm thick. Outer surface almost smooth and chocolate-brown; internally pale irregular fragments embedded in a dark reddish mass. Odour not marked; taste slightly bitter.

Microscopical : Reddish-brown powder consisting of numerous, rounded or polygonal, parenchymatous, cells, filled with more or less gelatinized starch; fragments of dark brown epidermis of the seed consisting of palisade cells which in surface view have wavy outlines; the parenchymatous cells, with beaded or coarsely pitted walls of the inner portion of the seed.

Identification : Evaporate 20 ml of 60.0 percent alcoholic extract to remove alcohol; add 5 ml of 5.0 percent sodium hydroxide solution and extract successively 3 times with chloroform, using 20 ml each time, concentrate the chloroform extract to 2 ml and carry out Co-TLC with caffeine, using chloroform : methanol (9:1 v/v) as mobile phase and chloramine-T as spray reagent. One spot corresponding to caffeine is obtained.

Distribution : Venezuala, Brazil especially in the basins of the Amazon and its tributaries.

History and authority : Clarke: A Dictionary of Pract. Mat. Med., Vol. I, 856; Blackwood: Mat. Med. Therap. and Pharmacology, 355; Allen: Encyclop. Mat. Med., Vol. IV, 511. Preparation : (a) Mother Tincture φ Drug strength 1/10 Guarana in coarse powder 100 g Purified Water 400 ml Strong Alcohol 635 ml to make one thousand millilitres of the Mother Tincture .

(b) Potencies: 2x to contain one part Mother Tincture, three parts Purified Water, six parts Strong Alcohol; 3x and higher with Dispensing Alcohol.