Page:Indian Medicinal Plants (Text Part 2).djvu/639

Annual, caudex short-creeping, scaly, stipes elongated, rarely scaly ; frond submembraneous or more or less deltoid, subtripinnate, ultimate lobes of the primary and secondary divisions the largest, more or less pinnatifid ; pinnules elliptic oblong or oblong lanceolate, subpinnatifid or crenate, with broad blunt teeth involucres mostly elongated, more or less confluent, more or less crenated or denticulate, sometimes transversely wrinkled ; stipes and rachis purple-black, main rachis winged above, secondary and tertiary rachises all with a narrow wing-hook.

Uses : — The Revd. A. Compbell writes that the Santals prescribe a preparation from the roots of this fern for sickness attributed to witchcraft or the evil eye.

Actinopteris : — Sori linear, elongated, submarginal, indusium the same shape as sorus, folded over it placed one on each side of the narrow segments of the frond, opening toward the midrib ; a single species like a minature palm.

Ref. : — Beddome, Handbook to Ferns of Br. Ind., p. 197.

Vern. : — Mor-pankhi ; mor-pach, (U. P.) ; Mayursikha (Bomb.).

Habitat: — Throughout India, especially the Peninsula in dry rocky places below 3,000 feet elevation. Khandalla, Katraj Ghat on Mahableshwar Road. I remember to have seen this fern in the Victoria Gardens of Bombay. K. R. Kirtikar.

Stipes densely tufted, 2-6in., long ; fronds like fans, l-l½in. deep, composed of numerous dichotomous segments which are rush-like in texture, not more than ½ line broad, the veins few and sub-parallel with the indistinct midrib, the segments of the fertile frond longer than those of the barren one. (Beddome.)

Uses: — Used as an anthelmintic and styptic.

Dr. Dymock speaks of A. lunatum and A. venustum collectively and says : — " The native physicians consider maiden-hair to be deobstruent and resolvent, useful for clearing the primæ viæ of bile, adust bile, and phlegm, also pectoral,