522 
INDIAN MEDI01NAL PLANTS. 
A prickly shrub. Stems stout, densely covered with woolly 
grey or yellowish hair and set with numerous strong, hooked 
prickles. Leaves simple, 3|-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, ll-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 urbanum Linn, h.f.b.i., 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., hooked at the tip or below it. Achenes 
spreading and recurved; receptacle villous; head of hispid 
achenes sessile. 
