Indian Medicinal Plants/Natural Order Platanaceæ

Vern :-— Buin, búná, chanár (Pb); Chintar, chinar (Pushtu).

Habitat : — Cultivated in the N.-W Himalaya, from the Sutlej westwards.

A large, deciduous tree. Bark 1/6 in. thick, smooth, light or dark-grey peeling off in thin scales. Wood white, hard, with a faint tinge of yellow or red. Buds densely clothed with long hairs. Branchlets and young leaves with soft, deciduous, tawny ​or ferruginous tomentum. Branches very spreading. Leaves 6-9in. diam., usually broader than long-alternate palmy-nerved glabrous when mature, deeply 3-5-nerved ; base cuncate, truncate or cordate at the insertion of the petiole. Lobes irregularly toothed or lobulate. Petiole l-3in., says Brandis, 3-5in., (Kanjilal.) Stipules large, deciduous on shoots, leafy and lobed. Flowers monoecious, in unisexual, usually sessile, globose heads, 1-1½in. diam., 2-5in., long ; axillary peduncles 4-6in., long, male and female heads sometimes on the same peduncles. Sepals 3-6, petals as many, all extremely minute scale-like, often more or less confluent, formerly regarded as bracteoles. Male stamens as many as sepals, each consisting of a long almost sessile anther, the 2 cells parallel, adnate to a cuneate, connective with a truncate top. Female Ovaries hairy, at base, as many as sepals, surrounded by staminodes, narrowed into a long, subulate style, ovule 1, pendulous. Fruiting head 1-1½in. diam., consisting of numerous 1-seeded achenes, densely clothed at base, with long fine hairs, the broad apex narrowed gradually into the persistent long style.

Uses : — The fresh leaves bruised and applied to the eyes in cases of ophthalmia, the bark boiled in vinegar is given in diarrhœa, dysentery, hernia and toothache. (Honigberger.)

​PLATE No. 911.

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