Page:Indian Medicinal Plants (Text Part 2).djvu/237

Rh minute, 2-fid, hairy. Corolla-tube cylindric, slender, mouth 2-lipped, lower lip rather longer, pinkish-purple to white (C B. Clarke). Filaments and style very short. Fruit hardly 1/12 in. diam., nearly dry.

" Flowers all the year round, very pale violet-pink " (Trimen) " Stamens unequal pair, included. Ovary 2-celled, stigma capitate separating into two 1-seeded nutlets (Collett).

Uses : — The plant is officinal, and considered cooling. The tender stalks and leaves are slightly bitter, and prescribed in the form of an infusion to children suffering from indigestion, and to women after delivery. (Ainslie). It is used in Bombay as a demulcent in cases of gonorrhoea. A poultice composed of the fresh plant is a good maturant for boils. (Dymock). Honnigberger considered it valuable in ischury, stoppage of the bowels and pain in the knee-joint. In Mexico the leaves of several species of Lippia, called ' oregano' are very much used to flavour food. It is cooked with fish, sausage and other food.

Vern. :— Pámukh, karaita (Pb.) ; Shamuki (Pushtu).

Habitat : — Himalaya from Kashmir to Bhotan. Bengal Plain to the Sunderbunds.

An erect, more or less pubescent, perennial herb. Stems l-3ft. high, decumbent at the base, branched 4-sided puberulous. Leaves 2-4 in. long, variously lobed, narrowed to the base, lower ones stalked, pinnatified or coarsely toothed, more or less pubescent and usually hoary on the nerves beneath ; upper sessile, usually 3-partite. Flowers ¼ in. long, sessile in dense bracteate heads which elongate as the fruit ripens into slender spikes up to 10 in. long ; bracts ovate, acute. Calyx twice as long as the bracts and half as long as the corolla-tube, minutely 5-toothed, glandular-hairy. Corolla blue or lilac, hairy ; limb spreading, about 1/6 in, diam., lobes subquadrate, throat hairy. Fruit dry, ultimately separating into 4 one-seeded nutlets pyrenes 3-ribbed 1/16-1/20in., oblong, smooth dorsally, their under faces with minute white flaking cells.

Uses : — The fresh leaves are used as febrifuge and tonic, and as rubefacient in rheumatism and diseases of the joints ;