Page:Indian Medicinal Plants (Text Part 1).djvu/599

Rh A shrub or moderate-sized tree, unarmed or spinescent, young shoots pubescent. Wood reddish brown, hard, very close-grained, warps and splits. Leaves ovate or ovate-lanceolate, serrate or more or less pubescent beneath, along the nerves; petioles shorter than greatest breadth of leaf, stipules linear, fimbriate. Pedicels slender, 3 or 4 times the length of Calyx, solitary or fasciculate from lateral, often leaf-bearing buds, Calyx-tube campanulate. Drupe globose or oblong, pericarp fleshy.

The plum.

(I) Var. Domestica.

Vern.: — Olchi, er, aor (Pb.)

A small, rigid, much-branched shrub. Branches without pines always smooth, straight. Bark brown. Leaves ovate lanceolate, a little pubescent and in pair. Calyx velvety inside, flowers white appearing together with or a little before the young leaves. Drupe 1-1½in, diam ; black.

Commonly wild and cultivated in Kashmir and Afghanistan. Madden states that it is also cultivated about Almora.

The dried drupes are demulcent and laxative ; rarely employed alone for medicinal purposes. The pulp forms an ingredient of Confectio Sennæ, the Eleetuarium lenitivum of the old Pharmacopoeias. The fruit, stewed and sweetened, is used as a domestic laxative (Pharmacographia),

(IT.) Var. Insititia.

Syn : — P. bokhariensis Linn and P. aloocha, Royle.

Vern.: — Aloo-bokhârâ (Hind., Bom., and Pers.) ; Alpogâda pazham (Tarn.).

Western temperate Himalaya, cultivated or indigenous, from Garhwal to Kashmir, 5,000 to 7,000 feet in altitude.

Var,: — Insititia, Linn.

Syn.:—P. insititia, Linn.

P. bokhariensis and P. aloocha, Roxb.

Shrubby, unarmed or spinous. Leaves obovate ovate or ovate-lanceolate, serrulate, obtuse, acute or cuspidate, nerves hairy