21. Aconitum balfourii, Stapf, sp. nov.

The medicinal plant Aconitum balfourii 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.

Vernacular names:—Gobriya (Darina); Gobari (West Nepal); Banwa (British Garhwal).

Habitat:—Subalpine and Alpine Himalaya, from British Garhwal to Nepal.

Botanical description:—Roots: biennial, paired or ternate, tuberous; daughter-tubers sometimes paired or divided from the base, conic or elongate, conico-cylindric, 3-7 cm. long, 1-2 cm. thick with a few root-fibres which are either slender-filiform or conspicuously thickened (up to 5 mm. diam.) at the base, externally greyish-brown, fracture white, almost horny, taste rather indifferent, followed by a tingling sensation; cambium discontinuous, broken up into strands arranged in a ring, the smaller circular in transverse section, the larger tangentially flattened to horse-shoe-shaped; mother-tubers, with often numerous root-fibres much shrunk, grooved and wrinkled with conical stumps (root-fibre bases), collapsed.

Innovation-bud: a much depressed, broad, obtuse cone or hemisphere, scales broad with a clasping base usually decaying after sprouting.

Stem: erect, several feet high, straight, robust, simple, terete, delicately pubescent in the upper part, otherwise usually quite glabrous.

Leaves: scattered, 6-10, the lowest decayed at the time of flowering, intermediate and upper leaves rather distant, pubescent when young, at length glabrous, with the exception of the nerves below, lower petioles up to 7 5 cm. long, intermediate and upper much shorter, somewhat dilated at the base; blades dark-green above, paler below, orbicular or ovate-cordate or sub-reniform, with narrow or wide sinus, 1-2 cm. deep, 7-9 cm. from the sinus to the tip, 10-12 cm. across, 3-partite to ⅞, intermediate division rhomboid-ovate from abroad cuneatebase, 3-lobed to the middle, middle lobe much larger than the lateral, lateral divisions trapezoid, very unequally 2-lobed to the middle, all the lobes coarsely inciso-crenate or dentate, crenae, spiculate or acute.

Inflorescence: straight, racemose narrow, up to 30 cm. long, many-flowered, rather dense, yellowish-tomentellous, and slightly viscous; lowest bracts resembling the preceding leaves, following ovate or lanceolate, inciso-dentate, or dentate, uppermost often entire; pedicels erect or the lower ascending, lowest up to 5 cm., upper 2.5 cm. long; bracteoles, if any, inciso-dentate, or dentate, small.

Sepals: blue, pubescent; uppermost helmetshaped, helmet oblique, sub-semi-orbicular in profile, slightly concave in front and shortly beaked, about 20 mm. high and 20 mm. from tip to base, 10-13 mm. wide, very shortly and broadly clawed, lateral sepals sub-oblique or orbicular or slightly broader than long, up to 16 mm. long, obscuiely clawed; lower sepals elliptic or broad-oblong, obtuse, 12-14 mm. long.

Nectaries: glabrous, claw erect, or slightly curved, 12-13 mm. long; hood leaning forward, rather crenulate.

Filaments: hispidulous in the upper part or almost glabrous, 6 mm. long, broadly winged to beyond the middle, wings gradually or abruptly running out.

Carpels: 5, oblong, yellowish-tomentose, conniving in the flower, then slightly divergent.

Follicles: oblong, slightly divergent above, otherwise contiguous, loosely hairy, or glabrate, 12 mm. long, 4-5 mm. broach

Seeds: obpyramidal, trigonous, 3-3.5 mm. long, dark-brown, broadly winged along the rhaphe, faces with narrow transverse lamellae giving out towards the back.

Medicinal properties and uses:—Gobriya is quoted by Duthie as the name of one of the nine poisonous aconites of the Ralam Valley. A sample of tubers from Dudatoli was examined by Prof. Dunstan, with the result that the daughter-tubers contained nearly 1 per cent and the mother-tubers 0.5 per cent of pseudo-aconitine.