Page:Indian Medicinal Plants (Text Part 1).djvu/691

Rh Datiscin is prepared by extracting the bruised roots with dilute alcohol, distilling off the alcohol, extracting the residue with water, treating the aqueous solution with a small quantity of lead acetate (basic?) and concentrating the nitrate, from which datiscin separates on cooling. It is repeatedly recrystallised from boiling water, when the crystals have but a faintly yellow tint. It is very sparingly soluble in ether, and melts at 190°. Airdried datiscin gave, on analysis, values agreeing with the formula C21H24O11 +2 H2O. and that dried at 130° gave values agreeing with the formula C21H24O11+H2O. Specimens which had been dried at the latter temperature, however, were frequently found to have undergone decomposition.

When datiscin is boiled with dilute sulphuric acid, datiscetin separates from the solution on cooling, and a sugar, which is not glucose, but rhamnose, remains dissolved.

Datiscetin, C15H12O6, crystallises from alcohol in bright yellow needles, melts at 237° (uncorr.) and dissolves in concentrated sulphuric acid, forming a yellow solution, which subsequently exhibits a beautiful blue fluorescence. When datiscetin is fused with potash, salicylic acid is formed. Datiscetin is converted into picric acid on treatment with concentrated nitric acid, and into nitrosalicylic acid (m. p. 226°), on treatment with dilute nitric acid. -J. Ch. S. 1894 A. I. 142.

 

Syn. : — Cactus indicus, Roxb. 395.

Vern. : — Nág-phanâ. (H. and B.) ; Pheni-mama (B.) ; Chappal-send (Dec.) ; Nâga-dali (Tam.) ; Nága mulla (Mal.) ; Zhorhatheylo (Guz.) ; Phadyâ Nivdung (M.).

Habitat : — A native of South America, quite naturalized, almost a weed in India., in the Konkan, the Dekkan, extending as far north as the Jhelum in the N.-W. Himalaya, "also the Circars, Canara and Madras. "Apparently," says Gamble, Masulipatam was the place where the Cactus was first grown, and the species 0. Dillenii D. C."

A fleshy, perennial, leafless shrub, persistent, jointed. Stem branching, formed of successive joints, which are more or less obovate, mostly flat 1ft. long, bearing at first some minute awl-shaped bodies answering to leaves, which soon fall off, and dense woolly hairs, with tufts of numerous barbed bristles and long, sharp spines also in their axils. Flowers bisexual, regular yellow, tinged with red, open in sunshine and for more than 