522 INDIAN MEDICINAL PLANTS. 



A prickly shrub. Stems stout, densely covered with woolly 

 grey or yellowish hair and set with numerous strong, hooked 

 prickles. Leaves simple, 3J-5in., usually about as broad as long, 

 cordate at base, acute, more or less deeply 5-(7-)-lobed, with ob- 

 tuse or subacute lobes, unequally dentate-serrate, glabrous or 

 hairy on veins, and bright green above, very hairy and more 

 or less yellowish or grey beneath, with prominent reticulate 

 venation and often with prickles on the main veins. Petiole 

 long, lf-ljin., very hairy, with prickles beneath. Stipules 

 large, ovate, deeply pectinate, very silky, enclosing the buds, 

 caducous. Flowers white (often two recognized varieties, the 

 other being bright pink), in elongated terminal panicles, on 

 long stout pedicels ; bracts oval, toothed or pectinate at end 

 only. Calyx densely silky-hairy, segments entire or pectinate- 

 ly toothed at end. Petals fully half as long as the Calyx-seg- 

 ments. Fruit bright red or dull purplish, succulent, carpels 

 numerous. 



One of the varieties, named Macrocarpus Gardner, " is the 

 only real black-berry of Ceylon, and is large and juicy, and 

 when quite ripe has a good flavour " (Trimen). 



Use : — The fruit is considered by the Malayans a valuable 

 remedy for the nocturnal micturiation of children, and the 

 leaves a powerful emmenagogue and abortifacient (Rumphias). 



468. Gerish uvbanum Linn, h.f.b.l, ii. 342. 



Habitat-. — Western temperate Himalaya from Murree to 

 Kumaon, at an altitude of 6,000 to 11,000 feet. 



Erect, perennial herbs. Stems l-3ft., stout or slender, from a 

 woody root-stock, sparsely hairy. Lower leaves pinnatisect, ter- 

 minal leaflets of radical leaves 2-3in. diam. orbicular, lobed or 

 crenate ; lateral much smaller, often minute, sessile, broad, 

 variously cut and lobed. Stipules leafy, lobed and toothed. 

 Flowers erect, J-fin. diam. ; peduncle slender. Petals yellow, 

 narrowly obovate toothed, equalling or exceeding the Calyx- 

 lobes, which are acuminate and reflexed in fruit. Style in fruit, 

 forming an awn, ^in., booked at the tip or below it. Achenes 

 spreading and recurved ; receptacle villous ; head of hispid 

 achenes sessile. 



