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. coccinea, Linn, h . f . b . i ., iii . 145 . Roxb. 
126 . 
Syn. : — I. Bandhuca, Roxb. 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 af 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 1-l^in., 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 
flowers ; pink flowers, large and small ; pale cream-coloured 
flowers, with a tinge of red. Trimen has found all these forms 
of the plant iq 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 gunjas each of Cumin 
and Nagkesar, and made into a bolus with butter and sugar- 
candy, and administered twice a day (Dymock). 
