Gotu Kola

Gotu kola (Centella asiatica), brahmi booti in Pakistan and also called Asiatic pennywort, is a low creeping herb with rounded fan-shaped leaves. The honest reason to plant it is that it thrives exactly where most edibles struggle, in moist shade, knitting into a dense edible groundcover while supplying one of the most studied medicinal leaves in the region.¹

Where it thrives

The native range of the species spans the Caucasus and the tropical and subtropical Old World through to eastern Australia and the western Pacific, and it grows primarily in the subtropical and tropical biome, so the Punjab plains, the Sindh coast and the moister KPK hills all suit it.² It is a perennial that wants partial shade to sun in moist to wet but well-drained soil and tolerates wet ground that would rot many herbs; what it will not take is drying out.¹ It is happiest near water or in a damp, shaded corner.

Role in the system

Gotu kola is a groundcover pioneer for the wettest, most shaded part of the system, the niche at the foot of trees or along an irrigation channel where sun-loving covers will not establish. It spreads by creeping stolons that root wherever they touch moist soil, growing low and knitting quickly into a dense mat.¹ In a guild that mat is a living mulch in the herb stratum: it shades and cools the soil surface, holds moisture in the damp ground it favours, and crowds out weeds in the lowest layer while taller plants work the canopy above. Because it actively prefers moist shade, it complements rather than competes with the sun-loving herbs, completing the ground plane in the part of the design they leave bare. The leaf is a genuine dual-purpose harvest: eaten as a green and valued as a medicinal herb whose pentacyclic triterpenes, chiefly asiaticoside and asiatic acid, are documented to promote collagen formation and wound healing.³ It is a quiet, low-input cover that turns a difficult damp corner into productive, soil-protecting ground.

Growing it

Plant rooted runners or divisions into consistently moist, fertile soil in part shade; the stolons establish fast and spread on their own once away.¹ Keep the soil from drying, mulch around new plantings to hold moisture, and harvest leaves by pinching, which only encourages denser regrowth. It needs little feeding in good soil and asks mainly for steady water and shade.

What you get

You get an edible leaf for salads and cooked dishes, a well-documented medicinal herb long used for wounds, skin and general tonic purposes, and a dense, weed-suppressing living mulch for moist shade.¹³ From one damp corner it returns food, medicine and ground cover with very little input.

Sourcing notes

Easiest to establish from rooted runners or divisions taken from a healthy patch, which root readily and spread true; seed is slower and less reliable. Source clean stock from a damp, vigorous parent, plant several runners to close the ground quickly, and keep a moist nursery patch to divide from.

Sources

1. NC State Extension (2024). “Centella asiatica (Gotu kola, Asiatic Pennywort).” North Carolina Extension Gardener Plant Toolbox.
2. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (2024). “Centella asiatica (L.) Urb.” Plants of the World Online.
3. Gohil, K. J., Patel, J. A. & Gajjar, A. K. (2010). “Pharmacological Review on Centella asiatica: A Potential Herbal Cure-all.” Indian Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences.