Croton macrostachyus Hochst. Ex Del. is a deciduous tree 3-25m high which belongs to the family Euphorbiaceae. It is native to Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania and Uganda. It is locally named as Bisana (Amharic) or Tambush, Tambuk (Tigrigna)(Bantie et al.
, 2014). C. macrostachyus is commonly found in secondary forests, on forest edges along rivers, around lakes, in moist or dry evergreen upland forests, woodlands, wooded grasslands or clump bush land and along roadsides (AYLATE et al, 2017).
According to different ethno-botanical studies, the different parts of the plant are used traditionally for the treatment of different diseases in humans; swelling of nose, epilepsy, ascariasis, gonorrhea (Lulekal et al., 2008), bleeding, intestinal warts, rabies (Mekuanent, Zebene and Solomon, 2015), malaria (Bekele and Reddy, 2015); (Araya, Abera and Giday, 2015); (Wubetu, Abula and Dejenu, 2017), diarrhea, bloat, jaundice (Araya, Abera and Giday, 2015); teklay et al., 2013), tuberculosis (Wubetu, Abula and Dejenu, 2017), and hepatitis ((Mekuanent, Zebene and Solomon, 2015); (Lulekal et al.
, 2008); (Yemane, Berhane and Surender Reddy, 2016); (Maroyi, 2017) . The plant is also used traditionally as purgative, dermatitis, management of helminthes and sexually transmitted diseases in Ethiopia (Letha et al., 2016).
Different scientific studies reported that leaves of Croton macrostachyus showed anti bacterial acivity (AYLATE et al, 2017), hepatoprotective activity in CCl4-induced hepatotoxicity (Yassab et al., 2016), anti-malarial activity(Bantie et al., 2014), anti-diarheal activity (Degu, Engidawork and Shibeshi, 2016) in experimental animals, and in vitro anti-fungal activity and antioxidant activity (C et al., 2013).
