Page:Indian Medicinal Plants (Text Part 1).djvu/737

Rh or 3-nate. Leaves glabrous, villous or tomentose, opposite, or 3-nate, whorled, membranous, ovate or obovate-lanceolate, acute or acuminate ; blade 2-4in., petiole ⅛-lin. ; stipules cuspidate, from a broad base, very deciduous. Flowers small, greenish, in shortly peduncled Cymes, l-l½in. . Calyx with 5 teeth. Style glabrous ; stigma 4-5-lobed. Drupe ½-lin. diam. ; fleshy, edible, smooth, subglobose or turbinated, with 4 or 5 smooth, broadly hard, 1-seeded stones.

Use : — It is the Pindu and Pinditaka of Sanskrit writers, who consider the fruit to be medicinal, and describe it as strengthening, cooling, and an expellant of phlegm and bile.

The fruit is eaten when ripe, cooked or uncooked, or roasted.Another allied species, V. edulis, a native of Madagascar, is cultivated in gardens for its edible fruit.

Contains sugar, gum and a small quantity of tannin, but no cyanogenetic glucoside or alkaloid was found. The dried seeds yield on extraction with ether 14.01 p.c. of a semi-drying oil, with an iodine value of 15.07.— D. Hooper. Annual Report, Indian Museum, Industrial Section, 1909-1910.

Vern. :— Kotâgandhal (Loha janzia, in Chutia Nagpur) (H.) ; Rangan (B.) ; Pêtê (Kol.) ; Merom met (Santal) ; Tellu, Kurwan (Uriya) ; Disti, kori (Gond.) ; Kurat, lokandi, narkurat, raikura, guâvi-lakri, mâkri che-jhâr (Bomb.) ; Kura (Konkan) ; Shulundu kora (Tam.) ; Korimi pâla, korivi pâla. putta pâla, karipal, kachipadel, tadda pallu (Tel.) ; Gorivi, korgi, bennugorvi (Kan.)

Habitat : — Western Bengal, Behar, Western, Central and South India.

A small, evergreen, glabrous tree ; cymes sometimes slightly pubescent. Leaves coriaceous, hard, shining, sessile, or shortly pedicillate petiolate, oblong or ovate-oblong, with a rounded or nearly cordate base, 4-5in. long ; the reticulate veins nearly as prominent as the secondary nerves. Flowers white or pink, scented, in ample, nearly sessile, compound trichotomous cymes. Corolla glabrous, tube ⅓-½in., lobes oblong, filaments short. Style very pubescent ; tip of Corolla ellipsoid in bud. Stigma subcapitate, simple or cleft. Fruit small, didymous. Seeds plano-convex.