Page:Indian Medicinal Plants (Text Part 1).djvu/154

 karavah (Pushkara-named), Abja (born from water), Ambhoruha (born from water), Padma (A lotus), Pundarika (A lotus), Pankaja (born from mud), Nala (Lotus), Nalina (Lotus), Arvinda (Lotus), Mahotpala (great lotus).

Vern.:—Kanwal (H.) (Kumaon), Padma (B.); Padam (Uriya); Besenda, Pabbin (N.-W. P.); Pamposh; Kanwal Kakri and bhe or phe (root), gatte (Seed) (Pb.); Pabban (plant), bhe root, Paduro (Seeds), Nilofar (drug) (Sind); Kungwelka-gudda (Dec.); Kamala-Kankadi (Bomb.); Tavarigadde; tavaribija (Kan.); Paud-Kanda (Poona); Shivapdutamara-ver, ambal (Tam.); Erra-tamara veru (Tel.); Tamara (Malay.;. Tamarai (Tam.) Ceylon; Nelun (Sinhalese).

Habitat:—Throughout India, extending as far to the N. W. P. as Cashmir. Abundant in Bombay, Thana district, Ceylon, Persia, China, Japan, Malay Islands, Tropical Australia.

An erect, large herb of still waters, extensively creeping. Root-stock stout, creeping. Leaves raised several feet high above water; peltate, 2-3 ft. diam., membranous glaucous, cupped. Flowers magnificent, rose-red or white, sweet-scented, 4-10 in. diam. Peduncles and petioles 3-6 ft. high, full of spiral vessels, with stumpy, scattered prickles. Sepals 4-5, inserted on the top of the scape, caducous. Petals and stamens many, hypogynous, many-seriate, caducous, elliptic, concave, veined. Anthers adnate, with a clubbed appendage, produced beyond the anther-cells. Ovaries many, 1-celled, loose, sunk in a flat top of an obconic, spongy torus (not fleshy torus). The torus or receptacle 3-4 in. high, flat at top, 2-4 in. wide. Style short, exserted; stigma capitate. Ripe carpel, seed-like, in. long, ovoid, glabrous. This is fruit and seed at one and the same time; edible. Pericarp black, bony, smooth. Albumen absent, cotyledons fleshy, thick, enclosing the large green folded plumule. Testa spongy brown.

Hermann gives Nelumbo as the Singhalese name (Trimen).

In Sanskrit, the white variety is called Pundarik; the pink is called Kokonad, and the blue variety is called Indivara. 1 have never come across this third blue variety in the Konkan or the