Page:Indian Medicinal Plants (Text Part 1).djvu/675

Rh Habitat : — Throughout India.

A climbling, annual, scabrid herb. Root perennial. Leaves 5-lobed, lobes rounded, repandly and sharply toothed ; male flowers crowded ; female solitary. Fruit oval, rounded at both ends, obsoletely 3-angled, 10-striated, glabrous, about 1½in. long and l¼in. thick. Lobes of the leaves very broadly obovate and almost touching each other at their broadest part ; veins rounded.

The fruit is collected in many places and sold in the bazars as a drug, and very probably as an adulterant for the true colocynth (Duthie).

Use: — Supposed to possess purgative properties of Colocynth (Watt).

It contains a principle identical with or closely related to colocynthin.

Var : — Pubescens.

Vern. : — Takmaki (Bomb.).

Use :— The seeds are considered cooling, and are applied to Herpes, after they have been beaten into a paste with the juice of the Durvâ (Cynodon dactylon) (Dymock).

It is considered cool and astringent ; it creates appetite and removes bilious disorders (Baden-Powell).

Var. : — C. pseudo-colocynthis, Royle.

This is a synonym for Cucumis trigonus, Roxb., as cited by C. B. Clarke, H. F. B. I., Vol II, p. 619. This is described by Royle in his Illustrations of the Himalayan plants.

Vern. : — Indrâyan ; Bislumbhi (North India) ; Karit (Bomb.) ; Hattut-tumatti (Tam.) ; Adavi-puch-cha (Tel.).

Habitat : — Met with throughout the Deccan and Sind to Baluchistan, Kashmir and Afghanistan.

Use : — Pulp of the fruit is very bitter and similar in quality to colocynth, for which it is substituted (O'Shaughnessy). Supposed to possess the purgative properties of officinal colo-cynth. Dr. Gibson, however, expresses a doubt as to the correctness of this opinion. Experiments are required to determine the point. According to the report of Dr. J. Newton, a decoction of the roots of these plants is used as a purgative ; it is