Educational information, not medical advice — ask your doctor or midwife.
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Patala is the root and root bark of a tree called Stereospermum suaveolens. The name is also written Stereospermum chelonoides. The tree grows in India and Southeast Asia.
In Ayurveda, Patala is used on its own for fever, cough, swelling and poor appetite. It is most often taken as a water decoction of the dried root bark.
It is best known as one of the Dashamoola, the classic group of ten roots. Most products you will meet hold Patala as one part in ten, not on its own.
Here is the honest verdict on the evidence. The traditional record is long and steady. But we could find no published human trials of Patala by itself.
Traditional use tells you what practitioners have done for many centuries. On its own, it does not prove the plant works. That point applies to everything on this page.
The short answer is simple. No one has shown how Patala works in people. The suggested ways it might work come from lab dishes and animal studies.
In Ayurveda, Patala is called bitter, astringent and drying. It is said to settle raised Vata and Kapha. That is a label inside a traditional system, not a measured effect in the body.
Lab work on Stereospermum extracts reports three things in cells and in rats. The extracts cut swelling, act as antioxidants, and lower blood sugar. These findings are early ones.
They do not tell you what a cup of decoction does in a human body. The doses given to animals are often far higher than the doses people take.
Patala reaches you in a few forms:
Dried root bark, sold in pieces or shredded, for making a decoction (kwatha) at home.
Churna, a fine powder of the dried bark, taken with warm water or honey.
Dashamoola kwatha and Dashamoola churna, blends in which Patala is one of ten roots.
Dashamoolarishta, a traditional fermented liquid. It holds alcohol made during fermentation, often about 5 to 10 percent.
Here is a practical warning. Patala is one of the Ayurvedic roots most often swapped for something else. Bark from other trees is sometimes sold under the same name.
Buy from a supplier who names the plant species on the label.
Patala appears in the oldest Ayurvedic texts we still have. The Charaka Samhita and Sushruta Samhita both list it in the Dashamoola group of ten roots. Both were put together in the centuries around the start of the common era.
It sits in the Brihat Panchamoola, the five roots taken from trees. The others are Bilva, Agnimantha, Shyonaka and Gambhari.
Later Ayurvedic and Siddha writers kept it in the same place. They used it mainly for fever, breathing complaints and swelling.
Its standing in the tradition is solid and unbroken. That standing is about practice, not about trial results.
See a doctor if a fever goes above 39C (102F), lasts more than three days, or comes with a stiff neck, confusion or a rash.
See a doctor promptly if you cough up blood, get short of breath, or have chest pain.
Stop Patala and get medical advice if you notice unusual bruising, bleeding gums, blood in your urine or stool, or black tarry stools.
Stop and get checked if your skin or the whites of your eyes turn yellow, or if you get persistent vomiting, a spreading rash, or swelling of the face, lips or tongue. Swelling of the face or throat with trouble breathing is an emergency: call emergency services.
Evidence grades and traditional-use labels are explained in our methodology. Nothing here is medical advice.
Reviewed by the HealisticMD editorial team How we grade evidence →
The published evidence for Patala is weak or absent. That usually means no controlled trial has tested it, not that a trial found it ineffective — the two are different, and we grade only what has been published.
What it is typically used for, usual dose, cautions, and the study behind it where real trial data exists.
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