56. Euryale ferox, Salisb.

The medicinal plant Euvyale ferox is a member of the Nymphaeaceae (water lilies) 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. 115.

Habitat:—Sweet water lakes and ponds of East Bengal, Assam, Manipur, Oudli and Kashmir.

Sanskrit:—Mukhauna; padma.

Vernacular:—Makhana (H &; B); Kunta padma (Uriya); Jewar (Pb.); Melluni padman (Tel).

Botanical description:—A densely prickly aquatic. Rootstock short. Leaves peltate, corrugate, 1-4 ft. diam., elliptic or orbicular, green above, downy, deep bluish-purple beneath (Curtis PI. 1447), with strong spiny ribs. 

Spines: sharp-curved on the under and upper surfaces. 

Ribs: dickotomously branched over the whole leaf. The leaf, while in bud, is curiously folded up and enclosed in an involucre, which bursts as the leaf expands. 

Petiole: long, wavy, spiny. 

Flowers: 1-2 in. long, bright-red inside, green and shining outside. 

Sepals: 4, erect, inserted on the edge of the torus above the carpels. 

Petals: numerous, violet, 3-5-seriate, shorter than the sepals. 

Stamens: many, many-seriate, fascicled in eights; filaments linear, pollen spherical, 3-nucleate. 

Ovary: 8-celled, sunk in the dilated top of the torus.

Stigma: sessile; discoid, concave. 

Berry: spongy, 2-4 in. diam., crowned with persistent sepals. 

Seeds: 8-20, from a pea to a cherry in size, much eaten roasted. 

Aril: pulpy. 

Testa: thick, black. 

Albumen: mealy; embryo small.

Medicinal uses:—The seed is considered as possessed of powerful medicinal virtues, such as restraining seminal gleet, invigorating the system, &c. (Roxburgh).

A light and invigorating food, suited for the sick (U. C. Dutt).