68. Corydalis ramosa, Wall.

The medicinal plant Corydalis ramosa, Wall is a member of the Fumarioideae / Fumariaceae (bleeding-heart) 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): i. 125.

Habitat:—Alpine Himalaya, from Sikkim to Kashmir.

Botanical description:—A glaucous herb. Stem procumbent, weak-branched, 1-2 ft. (dwarf at high elevations), often leafy, fiexuous.

Radical leaves: few or many, long-petioled, 2-3-times divided; alternate segments small, narrow-oblong or linear.

Leaves: finally decompound.

Racemes: terminal, many, lax, many-flowered.

Bracts: cut into linear lobes, 1-5 in., flowers ½ in. long, yellow; posticous petal dorsally winged, hooded or shorter than the obtuse spur.

Style: persistent, pedicels deflexed.

Capsules: ovate-oblong, obtuse.

Seeds: shining, numerous.

Hooker mentions 3 varieties.

Medicinal use:—Dr. Aitchison, in his Flora of the Kurram Valley, says that in Kurram this is employed by the natives in the treatment of eye diseases, like all other plants, with yellow sap. It is there called Mamiran.