Page:Indian Medicinal Plants (Text Part 2).djvu/365

Perianth tubular, 2-dentate. Fruit oblong or globose, orange-yellow, or bright-scarlet when ripe, enclosed in the succulent perianth. Seed dark-brown, shining.

Uses : — The natives of Kanâwâr are stated by Longden to eat it as a sort of chatni. As a chatni, it is recommended for lung complaints in a Tibetan Pharmacopæia.

The Siberians and Tartars make a jelly from these berries and eat them with milk and cheese, whilst the inhabitants of the Gulf of Bothnia prepare from them a sort of rob, which they use as a condiment with fish. * * In some districts of France a sauce is made from these berries and eaten with fish or meat. A decoction of them is said to be useful in cutaneous eruptions. * * The roots of the plant are long and straggling, and often assist in binding the loose sand on which it grows. (Sowerby's English. Botany, Vol. VIII. p. 83.)

Vern. : — Ashûk (Nepal) ; Lhâla (Bhotan and Lepcha) ; Sûrch, suts, kâlâ bis, tserdkar, dhûrchuk, tarwa-chuk, chuma (Pb ).

Habitat : — Temperate Himalaya, from Jammu to Sikkim.

A willow-like shrub, 10-20ft. high, with lateral thorns. Very similar in appearance and hardly specifically different from H. rhamnoides. Bark dark-grey, brown, soft, ½in thick, cleft in deep vertical furrows and shallow cross ones into somewhat rectangular ones. Leaves membranous, glabrous or pubescent above, 2-4in., dull-green, linear-lanceolate, densely clothed beneath with white or rusty stellate hairs and some circular scales, so also are in the petioles and branchlets covered.

Use : — The fruit is employed in cases of lung disease. (Punjab Products )

Vern. : — Turâpâuli (Afg.) ; Bhangrâ, bândâ, bamba, kahbang (Pb.) ; Bambal, wahal, ahalû (Pb.) ; Dibk (Arab.) ; Ban, banda