Page:Indian Medicinal Plants (Text Part 2).djvu/34

784 A small, deciduous tree, with crooked trunk arid thick fleshy branches, full of tenacious milky juice. Bark, with a smooth peppery outer layer, grey, shining, exfoliating in small flakes. Wood yellowish-white, soft. Branches swollen and dichotormous. Leaves alternate, lanceolate or oblanceolate acute at both ends, spirally arranged at the ends of branches, 15in., petiole l-l½in., 1-glandular at the top. Secondary nerves numerous, straight, transverse, joined by straight intramarginal veins. Flowers fragrant, large, white, slight crimson, streaked without, pale yellow within, near the centre, in compound pedunculate cymes, usually when the tree is leafless. Fruit very seldom seen in India, follicular. Seeds winged. Corolla deciduous, before the anthers are mature "and the ovary is mature enough to receive the pollen. I found a pair of follicles Din. long each, and about lin. broad, in Satara, on a tree, in March 1898, in one of tire cantonment-gardens. I had the honour of presenting one of them to Emeritus Professor Woodrow of the College of Science, Poona. The follicle, figured in the Litho plate of this work, is from a drawing made for me by Mr. J. Berri man- Years of Ratnagiri of the original follicle now in my possession. I have grown in pots in my garden a variety of this plant, with flowers deep crimson outside and orange, yellow within." (K. R. Kirtikar).

Parts used : — The bark, leaves, juice, branches and flower- buds.

Uses : — Mir Muhammad Hussain describes the tree under the name of A'Chin, and states that the root bark is a strong purgative, and also a useful remedy in gonorrhœa and for venereal sores. He recommends butter milk to be given in cases of excessive purgation after its use. Plasters made of the bark are said to be useful in dispersing hard tumors (Pharmacographia Indica, Vol. II, p. 421.)

Dr. Hove, in 1787, found the tree growing abundantly on Malabar Hill, and mentions that the inhabitants used it for intermittents, as we do cinchona. S. Arjun (Bombay Drugs) writes that the leaves, made into a poultice, are used to dispel swellings ; the milky juice is