Extracts of this plant have been effective at eliminating the freshwater snail Oncomelania hupensis, the intermediate host of Schistosoma japonicum, a fluke that causes schistosomiasis.
The species of small snails was later named Oncomelania quadrasi by Möllendorff in 1895 after Don José Florencio Quadras, a Spanish malacologist who was also based in Manila at that time.