11. Delphinium brunoinanum, Royle.

The medicinal plant Delphinium brunoinanum is a member of the Ranunculaceae (buttercup) 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. 27.

Vernacular:—Nepari (Kumaon); Kasturi (Garhwal); Sapfulu (Ravi); laskar, spet, panni supalu, ruskar, liokpa (Sutlej); Ladara (Ladakh); Mundwal (Pangi).

Habitat:—Alpine, West Tibet.

Botanical description:—An erect herb.

Stem: glabrous or downy below, glandular pubescent above, 6-12 in., simple below, leafy.

Leaves: 5-fid to the middle, lobes sharply cut or toothed, 3-4 in, diam.

Lobes: cuneate-ovate, petioles very long.

Inflorescence: corymbose; corymbs sometimes compound.

Flowers: large, pale blue, hairy; tracts 3-5—partite, upper simple, oblong or linear,

Sepals: connivent, 1 in., membranous, orbicular, veined; longer than the conic and inflated spur.

Follicles: 5-6, fin., viscidly pubescent.

Medicinal uses:—The juice of the leaves of this plant is used in Kurram to destroy ticks in animals, but chiefly when they affect sheep. In Leh it is considered so poisonous that the dew from the leaves falling on grass is said to poison cattle and horses. (Aitchison).

“It is remarkable for the very powerful odour of musk, which is not peculiar to this species of the genus, but exists in other high alpine species, which form a peculiar group, with large half-closed membranaceous flowers, whence the mountaineers erroneously suppose that the musk-deer feed upon them, and thereby communicate the peculiar odour to their glandular secretions. The Delphinium Moschatum, Munro is now, by Hooker and Thomson, rightly referred to the present plant.”

Some other species of Delphinium are also used medicinally, or their roots are employed to adulterate Aconites. Thus Delphinium Cashmirianum, Royle, (Index in Flora of British India: 1. 26), Fig:—Royle III. t. 12, found in West Tibet and Tibetan Himalaya, from Kumaon to Kashmir, and called in Punjabi Amlin, is used to adulterate Aconites; since, according to Atkinson, the cylindrical tuberous roots of this plant are absolutely identical with the ordinary nirbisi roots.