Page:Indian Medicinal Plants (Text Part 2).djvu/520

The gum obtained from the unripe plantain mixed with rice water is used in diarrhœa. In the Punjab, the sap of the fresh stem is largely used in nervous affections, viz., hysteria, epilepsy, etc. (B. D. Basu.) The ashes of the stem are useful in intestinal worms.

Syn.—S. Zeylanica Willd. Roxb. 294.

Habitat: — Coromandel coast. "I suspect that it is the only species indigenous to India and is confined to the Western Peninsula and Ceylon, wild or cultivated." (J. D. Hooker, in Fl. Br. I. vi. 271.)

Sans. : — Mûrva.

Vern. : — Murahri, Marul (H. ); Murba, Gorachakra (B.) ; Ghanasphan, Marvel (M.) ; Murvel (Guz.) ; Marût Kalang (Tam.) ; Ishaura-koda-udr (Tel.) ; Katu-kapel (Mal.) ; Heggurutike (Kan.).

Root-stock very stout, branching stoloniferous ; stem very short ; leaves about 8 or 9in. a tuft, 2⅓-3ft. by lin. towards the middle, sub-erect, dagger-shaped, rigid, pale-green, with transverse bands of dark green, concave above, and striate, dorsally rounded, ¼in. thick from back to front, margins thin, reddish, terminated by a terete, acute, rigid, spiniform, green tip, l-2in. long. Scape a foot long, cylindric, green or pale-purple, with a few linear, acuminate bracts, l-2in., long. Raceme l-2ft. long by l½-2in. diam., striate, erect, cylindric. Flowers in fascicles of 3-6, sub-erect, very shortly pedicelled, sweet-scented ; bracts very minute, ovate, acute, pale-green ; perianth pale, greenish-white tinged with violet, tube ½in., long, cylindric, lobes about as long as the tube, linear-oblong, obtuse, revolute ; tips purplish ; stamens erect ; filaments as long as the perianth lobes ; anthers oblong, versatile, ovary trigonous, 3-lobed, lobes pitted at the top ; style fliform, exserted ; stigma minute. Fruit sparingly produced, globose, ⅓in. diam., of one