Page:Indian Medicinal Plants (Text Part 2).djvu/278

A small, slender much-branched shrub, very aromatic, hairy more or less, or glabrous, procumbent or ascending, often tufted, usually about 6-1 2in. Root-stock woody. Leaves usually nearly sessile, ⅛-¼in., gland-dotted, ovate-oblong, entire obtuse. Whorls capitate. Flowers small, purple, sometimes one-sexual ; males largest, in small whorls crowded in short terminal spikes. Calyx hairy , gland-dotted, 2-lipped, mouth hairy within ; upper lip broad, 3-toothed, lower 2-parted, segments linear. Calyx- teeth ciliate. Corolla ¼-½in., purple, very variable. Corolla-tube as long as the Calyx ; limb 2-lipped, upper-lip nearly erect, flat notched, lower spreading, 3-lobed. Stamens 4, nearly equal, protruding. Nutlets nearly smooth.

Uses : — On the Chenab, in the Punjab, the seeds are given as a vermifuge (Stewart). Used by the Hakims in weak vision, complaints of stomach and liver, suppression of urine and menstruation (Honnigberger).

The oil is sometimes applied as a remedy in toothache. In France a decoction of the plant has been used to cure the itch and some other skin disorders. Linnaeus recommends it for curing headache and the effects of intoxication (Sowerby's English Botany).

Chemical composition.— The volatile oil of Thymus Serpylliim, Linn., according to E. Buri (1879), contains two phenols which do not congeal at 10° C, and of which one imparts a yellowish-green colour to ferric chloride, and yields a sulphonic acid, the salts of which, like the thymol sulphonates, produce with ferric salts and intense blue colour. Jahns (1880) reported also the presence of a little thymol and carvacrol. Messrs. Schimmel & Co. (Report, April 1891) obtained by distillation of the leaves and stalks 0.3 per cent, of an oil having a very pleasant melissa-like aroma with a slight soupcon of thyme. Its specific gravity at 15° C. was 0.917 (Pharmacogr. Ind.).

Vern. :— Zúfah yabis (Arab, and Pers.). "The drug is generally attributed to Hyssopus officinalis, but this cannot be correct, as the flowers are in oblong spikes. It is imported from Persia " (Pharmacogr. Ind. III. 116).

Habitat :— Western Himalaya, from Kashmir to Kumaon.

An undershrub, usually glabrous. Stem below branched, woody l-2ft., erect or diffuse. Leaves sessile, oblong linear or