Page:Indian Medicinal Plants (Text Part 1).djvu/807

Rh pale, polymorphous, inner sometimes as if compressed, of 4 thick ribs, outer slightly curved and flattened, with a thick ventral and several thick dorsal ribs, all smooth and obscurely uneven. Pappus ⅓-½in., very diciduous, hairs very straight, soft and of nearly equal length.

Use:— In the Southern Punjab, the plant is used medicinally in sharbat (Stewart).

Vern. : — Pâthri (Bomb.); Ban-kahu (Sind.) ; Almirao (Goa).

The juice known as khee khowa (Sind).

Habitat : — Sandy coasts of India, from Bengal to Ceylon, Madras and Malabar.

Perennial glabrous herb, juice yellow. Leaves runcinate pinnitifid or sinuate, toothed or lobed, l-3in., rarely more, teeth rarely white and cartilaginous. Flowering stems procumbent, long, flagelliform, rooting and leafing at the nodes, l-3ft. long, arching from node to node. Heads at the nodes solitary or clustered, ½in. long, usually with bracteate peduncles. Involucre-bracts almost 3-seriate, with white membranous margins, outer short, immediate longer, inner linear ; midrib at the base hardening in fruit. Achenes columnar, very thickly ribbed, much shorter than the soft white straight deciduous pappus, 1/12in. pale, set with a few very thick rounded ribs, usually obtusely 4-gonous, pappus ¼in.

Uses : — Used at Goa as a substitute for Taraxacum. In Bombay, it is given to buffaloes to promote the secretion of milk (Dymock).

The juice is used as a soporific for children, in doses of half a massa, and is externally applied in rheumatic affections, combined with the oil of Pongamia glabra or the juice of the leaves of Vitex leucoxylon. (Murray.)



Vern. : — Bhadrák (Bomb.). 