Page:Indian Medicinal Plants (Text Part 1).djvu/275

Rh oblong-lanceolate, acuminate, attenuated at base, entire or sinuate at the margins. Flowers white, solitary, axilllary, pendulous, long-peduncled (often more than 12 in.). Bracteoles 2. Calyx thick, coriaceous, fleshy, cup-shaped, 5-cleft, tomentose (?) externally and clodded with silky hairs internally. Petals obovate, adnate below, to the stamens. Staminal-tube thick, dividing above into numerous filaments ; anthers long, linear, reniform or contorted, 1-celled. Ovary ovoid. Style long, filiform, divided at summit into as many radiating stigmas as there are cells to the ovary. Cells of ovary 5 -10. Fruit pendulous, oblong-obovoid, downy, woody, brownish-green, indchiscent, 8-12 in. long. Seeds about 30, kidney-shaped, brown, immersed in tough fibres and a mealy, reddish fawn-coloured, slightly acid pulp, which becomes powdery as the pulp matures.

Trimen says the Roman Catholics call it " Judas' Bag," because the fruit contains 30 seeds." Mr. Crawford of Ceylon Civil Service gives the circumference of the largest stem (in 1890) as 61 ft. 9 in., whilst the tree is only 30 ft. high. A tree at Puttalam, in Ceylon, is mentioned by Emerson Tennent as being 70 ft. in height and 46 ft. in girth (1848). In the village of Matunga (Bombay), in 1896, along the principal road going to Sion Hill, there was a large tree on the left hand side, of a similar enormous size. In the Thana District, 1 have seen several such trees in a Mahomedan graveyard on the right hand side while going from Thana by the Corset public Road to the Colset Bunder. Similar trees are mentioned as growing in Bengal. Originally, a Native of Tropical Africa, it was introduced into India and Ceylon by Arabian traders. It is now a naturalized plant, and grows all over India, along the coast of Gujrat, Central Provinces, Bengal. Into Ceylon also it was introduced by the Arabs. The Baobab trees, at Mannar have long been well-known.

The disproportionately large, short trunk is remarkable. The wood is pale-coloured, soft and porous. It is said by Lisboa that the pulp is refrigerent and diuretic. The bark has been proposed as a substitute for quinine. Its liber affords excellent fibre. The pulp of the fibres is used for paper-manufacture.