516 
INDIAN MEDICINAL PLANTS. 
scaly buds on the previous year’s wood. Calyx campanulate, 
segments woolly. Drupe downy or glabrous. Pericarp tender, 
succulent, stone deeply and irregularly furrowed (Brandis). 
Use : — The fruit is given as a demulcent, an antiscorbutic, 
and a stomachic. 
The natives of the Punjab believe the fruit to be useful in 
worms, Ascaris lumbricoides (Balfour.) 
The flowers are purgative. 
Like other species of Prunus, the kernels yield an oil, used by the natives 
of North-West Himalaya for cookery, illuminating purposes, and as a dressing 
for the hair. The kernels contain 82 — 85 per cent, of a pale yellow oil 
similar to almond oil. In Europe the oil enters into the composition of 
“ French almond oil.” 
461. P. Armeniaca Linn, h.f.b.i., ii. 313, 
Roxb. 403. 
Vern .: — Chuari, zardalu, khobani (H.) ; Hari, gardali, shirati 
(Pb.); Iser (Kashmir); Chuaru, chola (Kumaon); Zardalu (Push.) 
(to.) 
Eng.: — The apricot. 
Habitat : — Cultivated and almost naturalised in N. W. 
India. 
A middle-sized, deciduous tree. Bark dark-brown, rough 
with narrow longitudinal clefts. Sapwood white ; heart wood 
greyish-brown, mottled with dark-brown streaks, moderately 
hard. Leaves convolute in bud, appearing after or with the 
flowers, broadly ovate, nearly as broad as long, acuminate, 
crenate ; petiole glandular, half the length of the leaf ; stipules 
lanceolate. Flowers pinkish white, solitary or fasciculate, from 
scaly buds on the previous year’s wood. Peduncles short. 
Drupe downy or glabrous ; pericarp tender, succulent, in- 
dehiscent. Stone smooth, with a thickened sulcate margin. 
Use : — It is stated that apricots form antidotes to hill sick- 
ness. In Tibet, they are applied after mastication in ophthal- 
mia; and Bellew mentions that the dried fruit is in Afghanistan,, 
used as a laxative and refrigerant in fevers, &e. (Stewart). 
