Page:Indian Medicinal Plants (Text Part 1).djvu/738

658 Use : — The Santals employ the root or fruit as a medicine to be given to females when the urine is high colored (Revd. A Campbell).

Syn. :— I. Bandhuca, Roxb. 126.

Sans. : — Ruktaka ; Bandhooka.

Vern. :— Rangan, Rajana (B.) ; Pankul (Mar.). Bakora, âbuli (Bomb.).

Habitat : — Cultivated throughout India, a native of the Western Peninsula, in the Concan or Chittagong.

A shrub, with long branches, twigs compressed, thickened at nodes. Leaves small, 2-3in., obovate or oval-oblong, rounded or even, subcordate at base, acute, often cuspidate at apex, glabrous and shining, rather rigid, lateral veins somewhat conspicuous, pellucid ; petiole extremely short ; stipules, with a long rigid bristle, sub-persistent. Flowers rather large, shortly stalked, cymes lax, trichotomous. Calyx-segments, either short, with toothed margin, or longer and acute, shorter than ovary. Corolla-tube l-l⅛in., very slender, lobes oblong- oval, acute or obtuse, about half as long as tube, spreading. Fruit ½in., nearly globose, purple, says Trimen. Bright scarlet, says K. R. K., in the specimens found throughout the Konkan, in uncultivated plants found in the jungles, where they are most conspicuous before the monsoons, with their beautifully scartlet flowers in showy tufts. The fruit is edible. There are many garden varieties bearing similar tufts of lemon-yellow 7 flowers ; pink flowers, large and small ; pale cream-coloured flowers, with a tinge of red. Trimen has found all these forms of the plant in Ceylon. Brandis says that the plant is very common in the Western Peninsula, near the Western coast, also along the Ghats, on river banks. In Burma, only cultivated. An ornament of Indian gardens.

Uses: — In dysentery, 2 tolâs of the flowers, fried in ghi (melted butter), are rubbed down with 4 gunjâs each of Cumin and Nâgkesar, and made into a bolus with butter and sugar-candy, and administered twice a day (Dymock).