1062 INDIAN MEDICINAL PLANTS. 



softly pubescent both sides. Flowers in robust woolly pubescent 

 spikes upto 18in. long, numerous, stiffly renexed against rachis, 

 densely crowded. Bracts short, renexed, ovate, membranous, 

 with a long very acute point ; bractlets very sharply spinescent 

 (very hard in fruit), with a broad membranous wing at base. 

 Perianth-leaves about £in., oblong-oval, acute, glabrous and 

 shining, with a narrow white membranous margin. Stamens 5, 

 staminodes, large, truncate, fimbriate. Fruit very small, oblong 

 cylindrical, truncate, nearly smooth, brown, enclosed in a hard 

 perianth. 



A very common weed throughout the Tropics in India, 

 Ceylon, in waste land and in grass. Trimen observes that the 

 perianth containing the fruit disarticulates from the rachis 

 above the bract carrying away with it the spinescent bractlets 

 by which it becomes attached to other objects and is transport- 

 ed. Flowers greenish white. 



Uses : — It possesses valuable medicinal properties as a 

 pungent and laxative, and is considered useful in dropsy, 

 piles, boils, eruptions of the skin, etc. The seeds and leaves 

 are considered emetic, and are useful in hydrophobia and 

 snake-bites. (T. N. Mukerji's Amsterdam Catalogue.) The 

 dried plant is given to children for colic and also as an astrin- 

 gent in gonorrhoea. (Stewart's Punjab Plants.) Major Madden 

 says that the flowering spikes are regarded as a protective 

 against scorpions, the insects being paralysed through the 

 presence of a twig. The ash yields a large quantity of potash, 

 rendering it useful in the arts as well as in medicine. Mixed 

 with orpiment this ash is used externally in the treatment of 

 ulcers, and of warts on the penis and other parts of the body. 

 (U. C. Dutt.) Sesamum oil and the ash (apamarga taila) are 

 used in the treatment of disease of the ear, being poured into 

 the meatus. Dr. Bidie says : " Various English practitioners 

 agree as to its marked diuretic properties in the form of a 

 decoction." Dr. Cornish reports favourably, having found it 

 efficacious in the treatment of dropsy. Dr. Shortt reports on 

 its use as an external applicant in the treatment of the bites 

 of insects ; and Dr. Turner *calls attention to it as a remedy 



