Page:Indian Medicinal Plants (Text Part 2).djvu/260

leafless blind root suckers which are believed to assist in respiration in the same way as lenticels do." Sometimes the suckers produce leaves and grow up into bushes. Bark greyish -brown, thin. Wood brown or grey, hard, in alternate layers of pore-bearing tissue and loose large-celled tissue without pores. The former layer shows the large moderate-sized or small pores in radial strings of 1 to 5 between the fine short medullary rays ; the latter is much narrower and darker, forming belts which occasionally join each other, so that the layers are clearly not annual growth (Gamble). Branchlets, petiols underside of leaves and inflorescence clothed with a dense white silvery tomentum of very minute hairs. Leaves obovate or elliptic-obtuse, 3½ by 1½., base tapering, at times glabrate beneath. Flowers yellow, sessile, in bracteate heads (contracted cymes) which are arranged in trichotomous corymbs. Calyx ⅛in., minutely pubescent, divided to the base into 5 imbricate sepals, corolla tubular glabrate, ¼in. lobes, 4 ovate acute or one lobe shortly bifid or lobes 5, subequal (not rarely all forms on one bush). Stamens 4, in the throat of the tube, another cells parallel. Ovary hairy, imperfectly 4-celled, ovules 4, suspended from a central 4-winged placenta, style short, distinct, sometimes as long as the ovary. Capsule lin., compressed, dehiscing into two thick valves. Seed one, cotyledons large, folded lengthwise, hypocotyl (radicle) villous ; the seed often germinates before it falls (Brandis).

Uses : — The roots possess aphrodisiac properties. The unripe seeds are used as poultice to hasten suppuration of boils and abscesses. It is used for small-pox in Madras. " The bark is astringent" (Watt's Diet. I. 361.)

Sans. : — Âjaka, gambhiram, tiksnamânu gandhapanirjjak.

Vern. : — Bharbhari (Santal) ; Kukka tulasi (Tel.) ; Ganjam-korai (Tam.) ; Nâyitulasi, Râmatulasi (Kan.) ; Káttu-ramatulasi (Mal.).