Page:Indian Medicinal Plants (Text Part 1).djvu/435

Rh generally observed in the same disease under the use of ordinary purgatives. This is the chief cause of my including the above plant in this work (MOODEEN SHERIFF).

Eng. Horse-chestnut.

Vern:— Pû (Pb.).

Habitat : — Found in India only in a state of cultivation.

North America, Temparate Asia, Asia Minor ; Central Asia.

Large trees, often reaching 50-60 ft., with a broad pyramidal outline or shrubs. Trunk erect. Leaves opposite ex-stipnlate, digitately composite ; leaflets 7, broad, unequal in size, serrate. Flowers irregular, polygamous, interminal, more or less elongate, branched cymiferous racemes. Cymes often 1-parous. Lobes of gamophyllous tubular Calyx 5, unequal, imbricate. Corolla snowy white, dashed with pink and yellow, inodorous. Petals 5, or, the 5th place vacant, 4, unequal unguiculate ; claw linear, compressed or canaliculate ; limb in-appendiculate, imbricate. Stamens 5-8, subcentric ; filaments free, interior to annular or unilateral disk. Sub-hypogynous, erect or arcuately declinate. Anthers introse, 2-rimose, dehiscent by two longitudinal clefts. Germen (in male flower rudimentary) sub-centric, sessile, 3-locular, the ovular coat is double. Style terminal, elongate, apex stigmatose, simple. Ovules in cells 2, inserted in the internal angle ; one ascendent ; raphe ventral ; the other descendent ; raphe dorsal. Fruit capsular, 3-locular, smooth or more rarely echinate, coriaceous, globose or sub-3-lobed, loculicidal, cells, 1-3, 1-2-spermous. Seeds sub-globose ; hilum large. Testa smooth, coriaceous, exarillate. Cotyledons of ex-albuminous embryo thickly fleshy, hemi-spherical, conferruminate. Radicle arched, more or less sheathed within the testa. The pollen is ellipsoid.


 * In Hooker's F. B. I., contributor W. P. Hiern says, at p. 675; "the Æsculus Hippocastanum, Linn, is said to be indigenous in North India, but it is not now known in the wild state (1875 A. D.)"— K. R. K.