Page:Indian Medicinal Plants (Text Part 1).djvu/354

274 Pores small, ringed, in small groups of two or three together, sometimes, but not always, more numerous, in the Autumn wood. Medullary rays wavy, fine, short, white, numerous, uniform and equidistant. Annual rings marked by distant lines, and often by a continuous belt of pores (Gamble.) Leaves alternate, trifoliate. Leaflets 3 generally, sometimes 5 ; ovate-lanceolate, crenate, lateral sessile, terminal, long-petioled. Flowers 1¼in. diam., bisexual, 4-5-merous, greenish- white, in short lateral panicles, with a fine, sweet, honey scent. Pedicels and Calyx pubescent. Calyx flat, teeth small ; Petals imbricate ; Stamens numerous, filaments short, sometimes fascicled (J. D. Hooker), anthers linear (Brandis.) Fruit 4-6in. diam., globose mostly ; rind smooth grey or yellow. J. D. Hooker says the fruit is oblong to pyriform. The tree is very common in Western India. I have not seen the fruit in any of the two latter shapes (K. R. Kirtikar.) Seeds numerous, oblong, flat ; testa densely clothed with thick fibrous hairs, in a thick orange-coloured, sweet, aromatic, gelatinous pulp.

Parts used :— The fruit (both ripe and unripe), root bark, leaves, rind of the ripe fruit and flowers.

Uses: —In medicine it is used in various ways : —

(a) The unripe fruit is cut up and sun-dried, and in this form is sold in the bazaars in dried whole or broken slices. It is regarded as astringent, digestive and stomachic, and is prescribed in diarrhœa and dysentry, often proving effectual in chronic cases, after all other medicines have failed. It seems especially useful in chronic diarrhœa ; a simple change of the hours of meals and an alteration in the ordinary diet, combined with bael fruit, will almost universally succeed.

The value of the fruit as a cure for dysentery is when it is unripe. (K. R. Kirtikar.)

(b) The ripe fruit is sweet, aromatic and cooling ; and, made into a morning sherbet, cooled with ice, is pleasantly laxative and a good simple cure for dyspepsia. The dried ripe pulp is astringent and used in dysentery.

(c) The root bark is sometimes made into a decoction and