658 INDIAN MEDICINAL PLANTS. 



Use : — The Santals employ the root or fruit as a medicine to 

 be given to females when the urine is high colored (Revd. A 

 Campbell). 



611. I. coceinea, Linn, h.f.b.l, hi. 145. Boxb. 

 126. 



Syn. :— I. Bandhuca, Eoxb. 126. 



Sans. : — Ruktaka ; Bandhooka. 



Vern. :— Rangan, Rajana (B.) ; Pankul (Mar.). Bakora, abuli 



(Bomb.). 



Habitat : — Cultivated throughout India, a native of the 

 Western Peninsula, in the Concan or Chittagong. 



A shrub, with long branches, twigs compressed, thickened 

 at nodes. Leaves small, 2-3in., obovate or oval-oblong, rounded 

 or even, subcordate at base, acute, often cuspidate at apex, 

 glabrous and shining, rather rigid, lateral veins somewhat 

 conspicuous, pellucid ; petiole extremely short ; stipules, with 

 a long rigid bristle, sub-persistent. Flowers rather large, 

 shortly stalked, cymes lax, trichotomous. Calyx-segments, 

 either short, with toothed margin, or longer and acute, shorter 

 than ovary. Corolla-tube l-ljin., very slender, lobes oblong- 

 oval, acute or obtuse, about half as long as tube, spreading. 

 Fruit -Jin., nearly globose, purple, says Trimen. Bright scarlet, 

 says K. R. K., in the specimens found throughout the 

 Konkan, in uncultivated plants found in the jungles, where they 

 are most conspicuous before the monsoons, with their beauti- 

 fully scartlet flowers in showy tufts. The fruit is edible. There 

 are many garden varieties bearing similar tufts of lemon-yellow 7 

 flowers ; pink flowers, large and small ; pale cream-coloured 

 flowers, with a tinge of red. Trimen has found all these forms 

 of the plant in Ceylon. Brandis says that the plant is very 

 common in the Western Peninsula, near the Western coast, also 

 along the Ghats, on river banks. In Burma, only cultivated. 

 An ornament of Indian gardens. 



Uses: — In dysentery, 2 tolas of the flowers, fried in ghi 

 (melted butter), are rubbed down with 4 gunjns each of Cumin 

 and Nagkesar, and made into a bolus with butter and sugar- 

 candy, and administered twice a day (Dymock). 



