Indian Medicinal Plants

by Kanhoba Ranchoddas Kirtikar | 1918

A comprehensive work on Indian Botany including plant synonyms in various languages, habitat description and uses in traditional medicine, such as Ayurveda....

24. Aconitum laciniatum, Stapf. sp. nov.

The medicinal plant Aconitum laciniatum 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 name:—Kalo Bikhmo.

Habitat:— Subalpine and Alpine Himalaya of Sikkim and adjoining Tibet.

Botanical description:—Roots: biennial, tuberous, paired; daughter-tuber conic-oblong, often rather drawn out into a slender point, 3.5-6 cm. long, about 15-2 cm. thick, simple or divided, with filiform root-fibres, which are generally not much thickened at the base, brown externally, fracture whitish or pale brownish, almost horny, taste indifferent or very slightly bitterish, followed by a tingling sensation; cambium continuous, forming a sinuous ring in cross-section; mother-tuber similar, usually much shrunk and thinner.

Innovation-bud an: acute cone, up to 1 cm. high, outermost scales are very short, clasping, soon decaying after sprouting.

Stem: erect, stiff or flexuous, 6 to 9 dm. high, simple terete, slender to rather robust, finely pubescent in the upper part, with adpressed reversed hairs, otherwise glabrascent or quite glabrous and shining, drying usually chestnut-brown.

Leaves: scattered; basal 5-6, rarely 8, decayed at the time of flowering, rather distant; intermediate and upper leaves up to 10, approximate or congested, petioled, petioles rather slender, 2.5-7.5 cm. long; blades somewhat fleshy, finely pubescent or almost glabrous, reniform, rarely cordate-orbicular in outline, with an usually wide and shallow sinus, 4-7, rarely to 10 cm., from the sinus to the tip, 7-12 cm. across, 5-pedati-partite almost to the base in the inner, to ¾-⅚ in the outer incisions, inner divisions sub-equal, rhomboid from a narrow cuneate base up to 5 cm. wide, 3-lobed to the middle, lobes narrow, inciso-dentate or laciniate, laciniae lanceolate or linear, acute or acuminate, outermost divisions asymmetric, mostly unequally 2-lobed, otherwise similar to the inner, but smaller.

Inflorescence: racemose or usually loosely paniculate, few to many-flowered, finely greyish pubescent, with addressed curved hairs; lower bracts similar to the preceding leaves, but smaller and less dissected, intermediate and upper lanceolate, sparingly laciniate or the uppermost entire and very narrow; pedicels ascending, slender, lowest 3.5-5 (rarely 7.5) cm. long, upper much shorter; bracteoles herbaceous, resembling the upper bracts.

Sepals: saturated red-purple or dark-red, finely pubescent; uppermost helmet-shaped, helmet erect or sub-erect, equally curved in front and on the back, or slightly concave in front, produced into a short lip or beak, about 20 mm. high and 20 mm. from the tip to the base, 9-13 mm. wide, claw broad, short; lateral sepals oblique, sub-orbicular, ciliate, 14-16 mm. long, broadly and obscurely clawed; lower defiexed or sub-horizontal, oblong, obtuse, 12-14 mm. long.

Nectaries: hispidulous, at least below; claw slightly curved, about 12 mm. long; hood sub-erect or slightly leaning forward, 6 mm. long, gibbous or almost spurred on the back, close to the apex, lip short or elongate, rather broad, 2-lobed.

Filaments: hispidulous in the upper part, 7 mm. long, winged up to or beyond the middle, wings gradually or abruptly running out.

Carpels: 3, rarely 4 or 5, conniving in the flower, oblong, attenuate into a slender, finely curved style, densely and adpressedly pubescent.

Follicles: at first divergent, then conniving, contiguous, linear-oblong, more or less convex on the back, 18-25 mm. long, 5-6 mm. wide, finely pubescent.

Seeds: obpy rami dal, 3-gonous, 3 mm. long, brown, broadly winged along the rhaphe, with transverse, undulate, hyaline lamellae.

Medicinal properties and uses:—According to Rogers, it forms, together with Bikh (Aconitum spicatum) the article known as “Nepal Aconite.”

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