Page:Indian Medicinal Plants (Text Part 2).djvu/455
Habitat :— Deccan Peninsula, native of the forests of the Western ghats ; cultivated throughout the hotter parts of India.
A large, ever-green, glabrous tree, attaining 60ft. Wood moderately hard ; sapwood pale, heart-wood bright-yellow, darkening on exposure ; very durable, seasons well. Bark thick, blackish, deeply cleft when old, yielding a gum. The juice is used as bird lime. Youngest shoots and midrib with soft, stiff hairs (Brandis.) Leaves 4-8 in., thickly coriaceous, dark-green, elliptic-oblong or ovate, acuminate, entire or 3-lobed ; base acute, rather rough beneath ; leaves of young plants often lobed ; nerves 7-8 pair. Petiole ½-lin., rather slender ; stipules large spathaceous, lanceolate, glabrous. Flower-heads embraced by spathaceous deciduous stipular sheaths, axillary and terminal, often 2-nate. Peduncles fin., at first slender. Male cylindric, 2-6in., by l-2in., diam ; bractioles O sepals 2, oblong or spathulate ; tips pubescent. Fruit 12-30 by 6-12in., in young trees on large branches in old trees hanging on short stalks from the main stem or branches through conical protruberance of the rind, oblong or cylindric, tubercled, i.e., with flattish, rarely acute, tips of the pyramidal antho-carps. Seeds oily, numerous, an inch long, oblong. Testa thin, coriaceous, surrounded by a luxious pulp, which latter forms the staple food of the natives. Pulp is eaten cooked or uncooked when ripe, and preserved dry in flat pan-cakes. Seeds eaten boiled or roasted.
Uses : — The juice of the plant is applied externally to glandular swellings and abscesses to promote suppuration. The tublers, if worn on the waist, are said to cure hydrocele. The young leaves are used in skin diseases, and the root is used internally in diarrhœa.
The leaves considered an antidote to snake-poison. (T. N. Mukerji.) The unripe fruit is astringent, the ripe laxative, but rather difficult to digest, although very nutritious.
The dye stuff jackwood contains, in addition to morin, cyanomaclurin C15H12O6 or C18H16O7 . It possesses the characteristic property that its alkaline solution on warming develops a deep indigo blue colouration. It was noticed that in certain important respects its properties were similar to those of catechin ; the colourless crystalline constituent of gambier catechu,