Habitat : — Throughout the hotter parts of India, along the foot of the Himalaya from Kashmir to Mishmi.
A deciduous tree, 50-60ft., with thorns on the back of young stems. Bark ¼in. thick, grey or brown, rough with longitudinal cracks and exfoliating in long irregular plates. Wood moderately hard to hard, grey to olive-brown, close-grained ; seasons well.
Leaves coriaceous, elliptic-oblong, ovate or obovate, acute, obtuse or rounded at the apex, the base usually rounded, bright-green and glabrous on the upper surface and turning pinkish-purple before falling, often finely tomentose beneath ; main lateral nerves 15-25 pairs, straight, prominent, finely reticulate between ; petioles ¼-½in. long, stipules ovate-lanceolate, unequal at the base, deciduous. Flowers dioecious, greenish-yellow, sessile or shortly pedicelled, arranged in dense axillary clusters or in long axillary or terminal panicled spikes exceeding the leaves ; bracts small, obtuse, villous Calyx ⅛in. in diam. ; lobes fleshy, spreading, triangular-ovate, acute, glabrous and often tinged with red ; tube pubescent. Petals of males obovate, pectinate ; of the females subspathulate. Disk of male flower thick and pulpy ; of the female truncate, enclosing the ovary. Drupe fleshy, subglobose, ⅓in. in diam., seated on the persistent hardly enlarged calyx, flesh-coloured or purplish-black when quite ripe. (Duthie.)
Uses : —The bark is a strong astringent and is used in Western India as a lithontriptic (Dymock). Used as a liniment with gingelly oil in rheumatism (Surg.-Major Ratton in Watt's Dictionary). Root astringent (J. J. Wood's Plants of Chutia Nagpur, p. 135).
Chemical composition.— The bark afforded 41.7 per cent, of water extract, containing 39.9 parts of tannic acid. The tannic acid gave a greyish-green precipitate with plumbic acetate, and a blue-black colour with ferric chloride. The air-dried bark left 7.35 per cent, of ash on incineration. Although this is one of the most astringent barks in India, it does not appear to be known to, or used by, Europeans in the arts.
1126. B. montana, Willd., h.f.b.i. v. 269, Roxb. 705.
Vern. :— Kargnalia, khaja, geia, kusi (H.) ; Gondni (Saharanpur) ; Geio (Nepal) ; Kaisho (Ass.) ; Kurgnulia (Kumaon) ;
