Page:Indian Medicinal Plants (Text Part 1).djvu/400

320 10-14 pair, alternating with shorter, intermediate ones ; tertiary nerves prominently reticulate. Flowers bisexual. Pentamerous, greenish white, in large terminal panicles, with triangular bracts. Petals obovate, narrowed into a claw, contorted in bud. Staminal-tube cup-shaped, 10-cleft, each segment with 2 short/fleshy teeth, the anthers between them on a short filament. Capsule smooth, l-2in. long, 5-celled, valves separating from the dissepiments, which remain attached to the thick spongy axis. Seeds numerous in each cell, flat, imbricated, winged at both ends.

Reproduces itself by root suckers. Uses: — The bark is officinal in the Indian Pharmacopœia where it is described as astringent, tonic and antiperiodic.

In intermittent fevers and general debility, in the advanced stages of dysentery, in diarrhœa, and in other cases requiring the use of astringents, it has been used with success.

Of the powdered bark, a drachm twice daily. This is the best form of administration.

The decoction forms a good substitute for oak-bark, and is well adapted for gargles, vaginal injections and enemas.— (Ph. Ind.)

Syn. : — Swietenia Chickrassia, Eoxb. 370.

Eng. : — The Chittagong wood.

Vern. : — Chikrassi, pabba, dalmara (B.) ; Boga poma (Ass.); Pabha pubha (Bom.); Pabba, palara, núl (Mar.); Aglay, agal, agle-marum, elcutharay (Tam.) ; Madagari vembu Chittagong chettu, Chittagong karru, cheta kum karra (Tel.) ; Dovedale (Mal.) ; Dalmara, lal devdari (Kan.) ; Maiu (Hyderabad). Hulanhik (Sinhalese) ; Aglad Kaloti (Tamil.)

Habitat : — Low country, Ceylon ; Western Peninsula, from the Concan to the Coorg ; also in Bombay, Malacca, Assam, Eastern Bengal, Chittagong, Forests of Burma, from Shan Hills,

A very large tree. Bark reddish brown, deeply vertically