Page:Indian Medicinal Plants (Text Part 2).djvu/429

N. 0. URTICACEÆ. 1179

yellowish-grey, moderately hard, no heartwood. Young shoots and inflorescence pubescent, otherwise mostly glabrous. Leaves elliptic, entire, those of the seedlings and coppice-shoots usually serrate ; blade 3-5 ; petiole ⅓-½in. long ; secondary nerves 5-7 pair. Flowers in short lateral, often compound corymbs. Male and female flowers mixed; perianth cleft nearly to the base; segments 5, hairy. Male flowers : — Stamens 8 ; anthers hairy, no rudiment of ovary. Hermaphrodite flowers : — Stamens 5 ; ovary compressed, 1-celled, stalked ; the stalk lengthening as the seed ripens, sometimes with the remains of the calyx at its base. Samara nearly orbicular, 1 inch diam., on a long slender or obliquely elliptic, glabrous or pubescent stalk. Wings membranous or chartaceous ; tip 2-fid, lobes incurved.

Uses: — The tree has a mucilaginous bark, which is boiled, and the juice squeezed out and applied to rheumatic swellings, the exhausted bark is then powdered and applied over the parts covered by the sticky juice. (Pharmacogr. Ind. III. 318).

Vern. :— Batkar, brimdu, brimla, bigni, bingu, kharg, (Pb ) ; Tughar (Pushtu).

Habitat :— The Salt Range and Temperate Himalaya from Murree to Nepal.

A middle-sized, deciduous tree. Bark bluish-grey, smooth, with horizontal wrinkles. Wood grey or yellowish-grey, with irregular streaks of dark colour, hard Branchlets slender, pendulous ; branchlets, petioles and young leaves glabrous or hairy. Leaves ovate to ovate-lanceolate, acuminate, base very oblique, sharply serrate, sometimes entire ; blade 3-5 ; petiole ½in. long ; the lateral basal nerves extending beyond the middle, but not to the tip of the leaf. Flowers with or before the leaves. Male flowers in axillary tufts, or racemed on short, leafless, axillary branchlets ; pedicels capillary. Sepals oblong, obtuse, marginally woolly. Female or bi-sexual flowers rather larger than the male. Ovary ovoid, woolly at the base all over. Drupe very variable in size and shape ; ¼-½in. long. (Brandis.)