50. Berberis lycium, Royle.

The medicinal plant Berberis lycium is a member of the Berberidaceae (barberry) family. This page includes its habitat, botanical descption, medicinal uses (eg., Ayurveda), chemical constituents and history of use in modern and ancient India.

Index in Flora of British India (Hooker): 1. 10.

Vernacular:—The same as those for Berberis aristata.

Habitat:—Western Himalaya, in dry, hot places, from Garhwal to Hazara, Jaunsar, Tehri and Garhwal, outer Himalayas 3-7,000 ft. Simla, 9,000 ft.

Botanical description:—An erect rigid shrub. Bark white or pale grey.

Branches: angular.

Leaves: sessile or subsessile, tough, coriaceous, narrowly-lanceolate, obovate, oblong, sub-persistent, not lacunose, 1½-2½ by ⅓-½ in., inner ovate, very spinulose, or the teeth few and small or entire (Collett.); upper surface bright green, lower paler; venation lax.

Racemes: shortly stalked, simple or compound, longer than the leaves, often corymbose, drooping, barely longer than the leaves.

Flowers: pale yellow, stalks slender, ½ in., style short, but distinct. Berry ovoid, violet, covered with bloom.

Part used:—The extract, known as Rasout.

Rasot or Rasavanti, used as an antidote against opium-habit, by Bhagwanlal Indraji (Pandit J. Indraji.)

Dr. Royle says:—“I have myself occasionally prescribed it, and the native mode of application makes it peculiarly eligible in cases succeeding acute inflammation, when the eye remains much swollen. The extract is, by native practitioners, in such cases rubbed into a proper consistence with a little water, sometimes with the addition of opium and alum, and applied in a thick layer over the swollen eyelids; the addition of a little oil I have found preferable, as preventing the too rapid desiccation. Patients generally express themselves as experiencing considerable relief from the application.”

It is mentioned by the author of the Periplus, who lived about the first century, as an export from the Indies, and that in the second century a duty was levied on it at the Roman custom-house of Alexandria; also that it was preserved in singular little jars which are now to be found in collections of Greek antiquities.

The fruit, which is of a beautiful purple colour and covered with a delicate bloom, is eatable, and is exported in a dried state.

Medicinal uses:—See the notes on Rasaunt (Rasanjana).