Page:Indian Medicinal Plants (Text Part 1).djvu/602

522 INDIAN MEDICINAL PLANTS. A prickly shrub. Stems stout, densely covered with woolly grey or yellowish hair and set with numerous strong, hooked prickles. Leaves simple, 3½-5 in., usually about as broad as long, cordate at base, acute, more or less deeply 5-(7-)-lobed, with obtuse or subacute lobes, unequally dentate-serrate, glabrous or hairy on veins, and bright green above, very hairy and more or less yellowish or grey beneath, with prominent reticulate venation and often with prickles on the main veins. Petiole long, l½-l½in., very hairy, with prickles beneath. Stipules large, ovate, deeply pectinate, very silky, enclosing the buds, caducous. Flowers white (often two recognized varieties, the other being bright pink), in elongated terminal panicles, on long stout pedicels ; bracts oval, toothed or pectinate at end only. Calyx densely silky-hairy, segments entire or pectinately toothed at end. Petals fully half as long as the Calyx-segments. Fruit bright red or dull purplish, succulent, carpels numerous.

One of the varieties, named Macrocarpus Gardner, " is the only real black-berry of Ceylon, and is large and juicy, and when quite ripe has a good flavour " (Trimen).

Use : — The fruit is considered by the Malayans a valuable remedy for the nocturnal micturiation of children, and the leaves a powerful emmenagogue and abortifacient (Rumphias).

Habitat. — Western temperate Himalaya from Murree to Kumaon, at an altitude of 6,000 to 11,000 feet.

Erect, perennial herbs. Stems l-3 ft., stout or slender, from a woody root-stock, sparsely hairy. Lower leaves pinnatisect, terminal leaflets of radical leaves 2-3 in. diam. orbicular, lobed or crenate; lateral much smaller, often minute, sessile, broad, variously cut and lobed. Stipules leafy, lobed and toothed. Flowers erect, ½-¾in. diam.; peduncle slender. Petals yellow, narrowly obovate toothed, equalling or exceeding the Calyx- lobes, which are acuminate and reflexed in fruit. Style in fruit, forming an awn, ¼in., booked at the tip or below it. Achenes spreading and recurved; receptacle villous; head of hispid achenes sessile.