Page:Indian Medicinal Plants (Text Part 1).djvu/516

436 A twining herb. Stems wide-climbing, slender, with a few adpressed hairs. Stipules minute ; lanceolate, deciduous ; petiole ½-1 ½in. Leaflets 3, membranous or subcoriaceous, small acute or subobtuse, green, with a few adpressed hairs above, grey and more hairy below, the end one ovate or oblong, l-2in. long. Racemes l-4in. lax, usually long, usually peduncled, elongated, the pedicel fascicled. Calyx ⅛-1/6in.; teeth lanceolate, as long as the tube. Corolla reddish. Pod linear, glabrous, recurved, 1 ½-2in. long, 8-10 seeded.

Use. — It is used in Hindu Medicine. Its properties are described in the Nighantu as follows : —

The Mashparni is bitter, cooling, sweet, astringent, and dry. It produces semen, strength, and blood. It cures consumption and fever and disorders of wind, bile and blood.

Syn. — Carpopogon monospermum, Roxb. 553.

M. anguina, Wall.

Vern. — Sougârvi, mothi-kahili (Bomb.) ; Pedda, enooga, doola-gunda (Tel.).

Habitat. — East Himalayas, tropical zone, Khasia, Assam, Chittagong and the hills of the West Peninsula.

A large, woody climber, the young branches clothed with rufous, deciduous tormentum. Leaves large, rachis 2½-4½in., with red, deciduous pubescence. Stipules deciduous. Leaflets on short swollen stalks, 2-4, rotundate or broadly oval, shortly acuminate, smooth above, more or less closely pubescent beneath, lateral ones unequal-sided. Flowers large, 1¾in., bright violet, keel green, on divaricate pedicels, ½in. long, 6-10in., a lax pubescent receme (or panicle), shorter than leaves. Calyx sparingly clothed with red bristles ; upper segments wanting ; standard often with a few bristles on back. Pod 2in. ; broadty ovate-ovoid, shortly-stalked, somewhat curved, with a short decurved beak, with a broad double horizontal wing along both sutures and several (about 6) broad, erect, distinct wings extending from them at right angles nearly half