Page:Indian Medicinal Plants (Text Part 2).djvu/212

962 Piwala koranta or koreta (Mar.) ; Lál-phul-ke-kolse-ká-pattá (Duk.) ; Vajra daul (Cutch) ; Shemmuli, varamulli (Tam.) ; Muli-goranta (Tel.) ; Keletta vitla (Mal.) ; Mullu-gorante, Mullu-madarangi, Kollate-vettila (Kan).

Habitat : — Tropical India, from the Himalaya to Ceylon.

There are white and blue flowered varieties growing in the Thana and Ratnagiri districts (K.R.K.)

A small perennial bush or shrub, often planted for a fence, 2-4 or 5ft., much branched. Bark white. Branchlets cylindrical, swollen above nodes, glabrous, with slender, very sharp spines in the axils, each with 3 divaricate branches, densely scabrid, lineolate sometimes puberulous. Leaves 3½-5in., entire, passing into bracts above, ovate, tapering below, acute, mucronate, glabrous above, slightly pubescent on veins beneath, copiously lineolate ; venation pellucid, lateral venation prominent beneath. Flowers bright, pale-orange, yellow, sessile, rather large, solitary, opposite, becoming spicate above. Bractlets linear, mucronate, stiff, almost spinous, spreading. Sepals longer than bractlets, acuminate, mucronate, glabrous, outer pair ovate, inner linear-lanceolate. Corolla about lin., tube cylindrical, pubescent outside, limb 1-1¼in. diam. lobes nearly equal, rounded, recurved, the two lateral ones broader. Stamens 4-2, minute or sterile. Filaments of two rudimentary stamens very short. Disk annular, small, entire. Pistil glabrous, Capsule about ¾in.-lin., ovoid, with a solid tapering beak, compressed. Seeds 2, ⅓in. diam., ovate, much compressed.

Uses : — The juice of the leaf is used by the natives in Madras in catarrhal affections of children, accompanied with fever and much viscid phlegm. The ashes of the burnt plant, mixed with conjee and water, are used in dropsy and anasarca, and also in coughs (Ainslie). In Bombay, the natives apply the juice of the leaves to their feet in the rainy season to prevent cracking. In the Concan, the dried bark is given in whooping cough, and 2 tolas of the juice of the fresh bark with milk in anasarca. Dr. Bidie observes that it acts as a diaphoretic and expectorant. A paste is made of the root which is applied to disperse boils and glandular swellings, and a medicated oil,