The Leaf in the Ledger: How a Colonial Herbarium Specimen From Madagascar Became a Modern Skincare Staple in India

In the shelves of the French Institute of Pondicherry’s Herbarium, a dried specimen of Centella asiatica (accession no. 9309) rests under glass. Collected in Madagascar and pressed in the first half of the 20th century, it carries no promise of soothing or brightening. It is simply a record: a plant once gathered from the island’s highlands, now preserved under a museum’s watchful eye.

That specimen became more than a curiosity. In the 1940s, Malagasy and French scientists isolated its triterpenic glycosides—asiaticoside and madecassoside—from wild-harvested plants in Madagascar’s highlands. By 1949, Professor Albert Rakoto Ratsimamanga and the pharmaceutical firm Laroche-Navarron had refined these compounds into Madecassol, a wound-healing agent that entered global pharmacopoeias. The story is recounted in a chapter titled Development and Commercialization of Asiaticoside in Madagascar, available via DOI: 10.1201/b22167-5.

The plant’s journey did not end in laboratories. It crossed oceans and ledgers, arriving in India as both raw material and living craft. Today, Centella asiatica from Madagascar is carefully distilled into a modern skincare craft, its provenance rooted in a colonial-era specimen now held at https://ifp.plantnet-project.org/showbyaccno.php?acno=9309.

We see its legacy in the SKIN1004 Madagascar Centella Ampoule 55ml, formulated with 100% undamaged extract from Madagascar-grown Centella asiatica. Each 55ml vial carries not just an ingredient, but a lineage: from highland harvest to laboratory isolation, from colonial herbarium to contemporary craft. A similar narrative unfolds in the SKIN1004 Madagascar Centella Ampoule Foam 125ml, where the same botanical tradition meets modern formulation.

This is not the story of what the plant does to the skin. It is the story of how a plant, once pressed between the pages of a colonial ledger, became a craft reimagined in India—its triterpenes extracted, its leaves distilled, its legacy re-woven into daily care.

“Centella asiatica is a flowering plant native to tropical regions… In various countries, it has been used in traditional medicine to treat a range of different conditions.” — UEBT – Centella asiatica