What does cowitch mean?
Cowitch is the common name for Mucuna pruriens, a vigorous tropical climbing vine of the pea family native to Asia and Africa. The plant is best known for its pods, which are covered in fine, bristly hairs that release an enzyme causing severe itching on contact with skin — hence names like 'velvet bean' and 'itchy bean'. Despite this irritant quality, cowitch has long been valued in traditional medicine, where preparations of its seeds have been used as a vermifuge and general tonic. Modern interest centres on the seeds' naturally high content of L-DOPA, a precursor of dopamine used in treating Parkinson's disease, which has made the plant a subject of ongoing pharmaceutical research. The word appears chiefly in botanical and historical contexts rather than everyday speech.
A tropical climbing legume (Mucuna pruriens) with pods densely covered in stinging hairs that cause intense irritation on contact.
"The botanist handled the dried cowitch specimen with forceps to avoid touching its irritant hairs."
The itching hairs or powder prepared from the pods of this plant, formerly used medicinally as a vermifuge.
"Nineteenth-century apothecaries stocked powdered cowitch as a remedy against intestinal worms."
Plural is rare since the word usually denotes the plant species as a whole or a bulk substance.
"Several cowitches climbed over the trellis at the edge of the plantation."
Touch a cowitch pod and you'll regret it instantly: its velvety hairs contain mucunain, an enzyme so irritating that the plant's very nickname is the 'itchy bean' — yet the same plant is cultivated as a source of L-DOPA for treating Parkinson's disease.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of cowitch
Cowitch entered English in the late seventeenth century, borrowed from Hindi kawanch, the vernacular name for the plant. It is closely related to the older English terms cowage and cowhage, which derive from the same Hindi source via Portuguese trade routes into India. All these names refer to the same tropical legume, Mucuna pruriens.
Related word forms
How cowitch is actually used
An uncommon word today, found mainly in botanical, pharmacological, and historical texts. The spelling variant 'cowage'/'cowhage' is more frequent in modern medical and herbal literature.
Easily confused with cowitch
Cowhage (or cowage) refers to the same plant or the itching hairs/powder derived from its pods, while 'cowitch' is an alternative name for the plant itself.
Couch grass is a common invasive garden weed of the genus Elytrigia, entirely unrelated to the tropical cowitch bean.