Page:Indian Medicinal Plants (Text Part 1).djvu/89

Rh (Ravi); laskar, spet, panni supalû, ruskar, liokpa (Sutlej); Ladara (Ladakh); Mûndwâl (Pangi).

Habitat:—Alpine, West Tibet.

An erect herb. Stem glabrous or downy below, glandular pubescent above, 6-12 in., simple below, leafy. Leaves 5-fid to the middle, lobes sharply cut or toothed, 3-4 in, diam. lobes cuneate-ovate, petioles very long. Inflorescence corymbose; corymbs sometimes compound. Flowers large, pale blue, hairy; tracts 3-5—partite, upper simple, oblong or linear, Sepals connivent, 1 in., membranous, orbicular, veined; longer than the conic and inflated spur. Follicles 5-6, $3⁄4$ in., viscidly pubescent.

Uses:—The juice of the leaves of this plant is used in Kurram to destroy ticks in animals, but chiefly when they affect sheep. In Leh it is considered so poisonous that the dew from the leaves falling on grass is said to poison cattle and horses. .

"It is remarkable for the very powerful odour of musk, which is not peculiar to this species of the genus, but exists in other high alpine species, which form a peculiar group, with large half-closed membranaceous flowers, whence the mountaineers erroneously suppose that the musk-deer feed upon them, and thereby communicate the peculiar odour to their glandular secretions. The D. Moschatum, Munro is now, by Hooker and Thomson, rightly referred to the present plant."

Some other species of Delphinium are also used medicinally, or their roots are employed to adulterate Aconites. Thus Delphinium Cashmirianum, Royle, (, I. 26), Fig:— Royle III. t. 12, found in West Tibet and Tibetan Himalaya, from Kumaon to Kashmir, and called in Punjabi Amlin, is used to adulterate Aconites; since, according to Atkinson, the cylindrical tuberous roots of this plant are absolutely identical with the ordinary nirbisi roots.

There are about 24 Indian species of Aconite which may be classified as (a) non-poisonous and (b) poisonous. The poisonous