Page:Indian Medicinal Plants (Text Part 1).djvu/224

144 run together into more or less concentric patches, sometimes long and continuous, more often subdivided. Medullary rays moderately broad, not very numerous, of the same colour as the patches" (Gamble). Leaves thickly coriaceous, 6-10 in. by 2½-4½ in.; nerves regular, close inarching, with an intramarginal one; numerous, parallel "alternating with shorter intermediate nerves (Brandis). Petiole short, thick. Flowers tetramerous, " bisexual, solitary or in pairs at the ends of branchlets, 2 in. diam." (Brandis) Male flower in 3-9-flowered terminal fascicles; pedicels short. Sepals orbicular, concave, persistent. Petals broad, ovate, fleshy; yellow, red or purple. Stamens surrounding the rudimentary ovary in four masses; indefinite; filaments slender, flat at the base and sometimes connate, anthers ovate-oblong, 2-celled. Hermaphrodite flowers, 2 in. diam., solitary or germinating at the tips of young branches; pedicels ½ in., thick, woody. Sepals and petals as in the Male. Stamens many, filaments slender, connate below. Female flower: — Ovary, 4-8-celled, stigma sessile, thick 5-8-lobed, ovate, solitary. Fruit, a berry as large as an orange, globose, smooth, dark purple; pericarp or rind firm, spongy, thick, full of yellow resinous juice. Seeds large, flattened, embedded in snowy-white, or pinkish delicious pulp, which is botanically called the aril. This pulp it is that gives the fruit its value as one of the finest fruits of the Eastern Tropics, and one of the most highly appreciated, delicious products of the Eastern and Western Hemispheres. Flowers from November to February. Fruit ready in May and June. Pierre has examined more than 1,500 Mangos-teen trees, without finding a single male flower. But he adds that several species produce male flowers when young, and female flowers at a later age. (Brandis).

I have seen a tree of this in the Dapoli English Church (Mission)— K. R. K. Parts used: — The rind, fruit, bark and leaves.

Use : — The rind is used as an astringent medicine for diarrhœa and dysentery. It has been found very useful in chronic diarrhœa in children by Waring and others. (Ph. Ind., p. 31.)

It has also been used as a febrifuge (Dymock).