Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Trapa natan L.


English Name : Water Chestnut

Family : Trapaceae

Origin : Europe and Asia

Description
It is an aquatic floating herb. The stem is long, flexuous and ascending in water. Leaves are crowded in the upper part of the stem, petiolate, rhomboid with a truncate base, entire, acute, glaucous above, villous-tomentose beneath and reddish-purple. The flowers are white. The fruits which ripen under water are dark brown, obovoid, woody and horned by 2 lateral boes which get enlarged and hardened and are one-seeded. The seeds are white and starchy.

Habitat
Plants grow rooted in soft mud in lakes, ponds, canals and slow backwaters and bays of rivers, in up to 5 m of water.

Parts Used : Fruit

Herb Effects
Cooling and stomachic (seeds); refrigerant (fruits)

Medicinal Use
Useful in diarrhoea and bilious affections with diarrhoea (fruits); with milk fruits are used in nervous and general debility; seminal weakness and leucorrhoea; used beneficially in eye diseases and as poultice it acts as an agent for resolution of tumors (stem juice).

Reference

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