Page:Indian Medicinal Plants (Text Part 1).djvu/416

336 rarely unarmed. " Branchlets, petioles, underside of leaves, and inflorescence densely clothed with bright tawny or nearly white tomentum" (Brandis). " Bark ⅓in. thick, dark grey, nearly black, with irregular cracks. Wood hard, reddish ; no heart-wood. Annual rings distinct, in specimens from N. India, indistinct from those in warmer regions. Pores small or mode- rate-sized, scanty, often oval and sub-divided. Medullary rays fine, very numerous, uniform and equidistant ; the distance between two rays much less than the transverse diameter of the pores. Pores frequently joined by short, fine, concentric lines (Gamble). A very variable tree. Leaves variable. 1-2½ by ¾-2in., elliptic-ovate or sub-orbicular, dark green and glabrous above, covered beneath with a dense woolly pale coloured tomentum. Margin entire or serrulate. Petiole 1/10-⅔in. long. Flowers greenish-yellow, greenish-white, says Trimen, on short axillary cymes ¾in. long. Calyx glabrous, white. Petals unguiculate, sub-spathulate, very caducous, reflexed ; lamina oblong, concave or hooded. Disk fleshy, 10-lobed ; lobes grooved. Ovary 2-celled. Style 2, united to the middle. Drupes 2-celled, fleshy and mealy, glabrous, mucilaginous when ripe and orange or red. Stone tuberculate, bony, irregularly furrowed, generally one-celled, never more than 2-celled.

Use :— The fruit is said to be nourishing (mawkish), mucilaginous, and pectoral and styptic. I think that the ripe fruit has a very agreeable taste — K.R.K. It is refreshing at any rate, Trimen says: — "The pulp has a pleasant sweetish flavour, when fully ripe. The berries are considered to purify the blood and to assist digestion. The bark is said to be a remedy in diarrhœa. The root is used in decoction in fever, and powdered to be applied to ulcers and old wounds. The leaves form a plaster in strangury (Baden-Powell.)

The young leaves are pounded with those of Ficus glomerata, and applied to scorpion stings in the Concan ; they are also, with acacia catechu leaves, given as a cooling medicine in hot weather : dose 2 tolâs. According to Ainslie, the root is prescribed in decoction by the Vytians in conjunction with sundry warm seeds, as a drink in certain cases of fever (Dymock).