Page:Indian Medicinal Plants (Text Part 2).djvu/19

Rh

Vern. : — Súm ; Kúm (Pb.).

Habitat : — Temperate West Himalaya and Western Tibet, Kashmir hills.

A large. tree, thick grey bark. Wood white, moderately hard. Leaves opposite, unequally pinnate. Leaflets 2-5 pair, all sessile or nearly so; 4 by 1¾in., elliptic, acuminate, serrate, midrib beneath glabrous or minutely pubescent. Flowers in short racemes, fascicled near tips of the branches, appearing before the leaves. Male and hermaphrodite alike without perianth. Calyx in all flowers obsolete. Filaments very short. Racemes in fruit l-6in., pendulous, pedicels ¼in. Samaras 1⅔ by ¼-⅓in., narrowed gradually to both the obtuse ends.

Uses : — A small quantity of saccharine matter exudes on incision from its bark. This only constitutes, however, a very small part of the Manna of European commerce, and does not appear to be used in India at all.

The bark is bitter and astringent, and was at one time, though very undeservedly, called European cinchona.

The leaves are purgative (Watt).

Transverse incision from the stems of this and other species of Frakinus, yields a concrete saccharine exudation, called Manna. Manna is a mild laxative, useful for children and delicate females, given in hot milk or in combination with other purgatives.

Vern. :— Khwan ; Shwan (Trans-Indus) ; Zaitún (Afg.) ; Ko Kohu; Káo; Kan (Pb.) ; Kan (H.) ; Khan (Sind.) ; Khwan; Shwan (Baluch.).

Habitat: — Fairly common, N.-W. Himalaya. Dehra, Jaunsur, Cabul, Baluchistan, south Suleman Range.

A moderate-sized, deciduous tree, 30ft., glabrous, not spinous. Bark grey, thin, smooth, when young, when old exfoliating in long narrow strips. Wood very hard, smooth, close and even-grained ; sapwood whitish ; heartwood large, regularly shaped, from light-