69. Fumaria parviflora, Lamk

The medicinal plant Fumaria parviflora, Lamk 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. 128.

Synonyms:—F. officinalis, Bedd.

Sanskrit:—Parpat.

Vernacular:—Pitpapada, (Hind. Dec.); Ban-sulpha (Beng.); Pittapapado (Guj.); Khasudlio (Dr. Shah); Kshetra Parputi (Hindi); Shahatara, Shatra (Pers., Sind.); Tura (Tam.); Chatarashi (Tel.) Khairuvva (Kumaon.)

Habitat:—Indo-Gangetic plain, lower Himalaya and Nilghiri Mts.: a weed of cultivation. Gujrat and the Konkan.

Botanical description:—An annual glabrous herb, pale green, much-branched.

Stem: diffuse, 4-24 in.

Rootstock: usually perennial.

Leaves: pinnately divided; leaflets deeply-lobed; segments very narrow, flat, lobed or entire.

Flower: pale pink or white, tips purple, ¼-⅓ in. long, in numerous, short racemes, 1-2 in.; bracts lanceolate, outer petals dissimilar, upper one broad, concave, produced at the base, in a short rounded spur, less than ⅓ the length of the petal; lower one flat, narrow.

Inner petals: narrow, clawed, keeled (Collett).

Sepals: lanceolate, much smaller than the coronal-tube.

Pedicels: exceeding the bracts. Lower set of stamens spurred at the base, the spur projecting inside the petal-spur.

Fruit:, a very small globose, 1-seeded nutlet, rugose, when dry, rounded at the top, with two pits.

Pittapapada is found as a weed, usually cultivated in fields in the Dekkan, the Konkan and Sindh. Described by Dalzell and by Woodrow. It has been found by Jaya Krishna Indraji at Porebunder.

Part used:—The entire plant, except the root.

Medicinal uses:—The dried plant is regarded as efficacious in low fever, and is also used as an anthelmintic, diuretic, diaphoretic and aperient, and to purify the blood in skin diseases. (Baden-Powell).

Along with black pepper, it is used in the treatment of ague. (Royle). Mahomedan writers describe the plant, as diuretic and alterative, aperient and expectorant. (Dymock.)

It has been prescribed by Dr. T. M. Shah of Junagadh usefully as a tonic in Dyspepsia and in mild fever.

Dr. Thornton is of opinion that the drug is useful in leprous affections.

The authors of the Pharmaeographia Indica describe the drug as beneficial in dyspepsia due to torpidity of the intestines and as a valuable remedy in scrofulous skin diseases.