Fruits & Stems - Specimen details
Catalogue Number: 54710 | |||||
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No Image | Plant Name | 75.00 CUCURBITACEAE Luffa echinata | Entry Book Number | ||
Artefact Name | Fruits & Stems | Vernacular Name | |||
Iso Country | India | TDWG Region | India | ||
Parts Held | Fruits & Stems | Geography Description | India, Bombay, Guzerat Province | ||
Uses | Fruits & StemsUse: User: Not defined | TDWG use | |||
Storage | Bottles, boxes etc | Related Items | |||
Donor | India Museum | Donor No | |||
Donor Date | Donor Notes | ||||
Collector | Collector No | ||||
Collection Notes | Collection Date | ||||
Exhibition | Expedition | ||||
Number Components | Publication | ||||
Notes: | Label source: The seeds Wa-upla-bij (Guz.) Description & uses, etc. We have not met with any notice of the medicinal use of this plant in European works on the Materia Medica of India. Roxburgh describes its botanical characters. It the Bombay Presidency, it is found only in Guzerat where it has a reputation among the Hindus on account of the bitter properties of the fruit, and is an ingredient in some of their compound decoctions. The dried vine, with the ripe fruit attached, is bought to Bombay for sale, along with other herbs from the Province of Guzerat. The stems are herbaceous, scandent, five sided, slightly hairy; tenderils 2 cleft; leaves generally five lobed, somewhat hairy, margins scallope toothed; petioles as long as the leaves, ribed. Fruit ov, al, the size of a nutmeg, armed with numerous long rather soft diverging bristles, obscurely divided into three cells by numerous dry fibres, and opening at the top with a perforated stopple, which falls off when the seeds are ripe; seeds about 18,ovate,c, ompressed, black and scabrous, testa very hard, kernel white. The fibrous substance in which the seeds are enclosed is intensely bitter. Dr Dymock. |