Page:Indian Medicinal Plants (Text Part 2).djvu/230

980 Habitat: -Cultivated in gardens throughout India and Malaya; where wild, uncertain.

A large elegant, ramous shrub, common in gardens, and one of our finest ornaments. I never saw it wild ; it is in flower most part of the year. Leaves opposite, short-petioled, ovate-lanceolate, smooth pointed, generally variegated with large white spots, though sometimes of a uniform green, and we have a variety with the leaves uniformly ferruginous. Racemes terminal, short, erect, smooth. Flowers large, generally of a beautiful crimson colour. Bracts opposite ; below three or four-flowered ; above one-flowered. Corolla throat compressed, divisions of the border soon after they expand becoming spirally revolute, with their inside wrinkled, and beautifully ornamented with small chrystalline specks (Roxburgh).

Uses : — In the Konkan, it is used in the same manner as Adhatoda Vasica, Nees. According to Rumphius, the variegated variety is used pounded with the milk of the cocoanut to reduce swelling. Loureirs states that the leaves are emollient and resolvent, and notices their use as a cataplasm to inflamed breasts caused by obstruction to the flow of milk (Dymock).

Syn. : — Justicia repens, Linn., Roxb. 44.

Vern. : — Kodaga saleh (Tam.) ; Ghátipitpápada (Bomb.).

Habitat : — Common throughout India, from the Punjab and Bengal to Ceylon.

A procumbent herb, rooting, ramous weed, says Clarke. Stems usually decumbent, says Triman, and rooting at the base, thin, erect, slender, cylindric puberulous. Branches quadrangular, pubescent or nearly glabrous. Leaves oblong or lanceolate- linear, l-2in., on very short petiole, acute at base, subacute at apex, entire glabrous, densely lineolate above (so as to be rough when dried). Spikes long, l½-5in., 4-sided, erect, terminal. Bracts much imbricated, all similar, nearly ¼in., broadly-oval, obtuse, sharply mucronate, pubescent, very slightly ciliate,