कलिद्रुमः - Terminalia bellirica
Name - विभीतकी
Botanical name - Terminalia bellirica
Description - Alternate leaves, clustered at the ends of the branches, puberulous when young. Pale greenish yellow flowers with odor in axillary slender spikes. Short pedicelled male at the top of spike, in the lower part sessile hermaphrodite flowers. Fruit-Short stalked drupes, clothed. (Fruit ovoid, slightly 5-ridged, brown-pubescent.)
Chemical Constituents- Stem bark contains arjungenin and its glucoside, belleric acid, bellericoside. Fruit contains hexahydroxydiphenic acid ester, beta-sitosterol, gallic acid ellagic acid, (also present in heart-wood and bark), ethyl gallate, galloyl glucose chebulagic acid, mannitol, glucose, galactose, fructose and rhamnose. Fruit pulp cardioglycoside bellericanin. Kernel contains non-edible oil.
Use - The dried fruits of the tree constitute the drug Bahera. The fruits are useful in stomach disorders such as indigestion, diarrhoea. It is given also as a brain tonic and applied on eyes as a soothing lotion. Bahera is useful also in piles, leprosy, dropsy and fever. The half-ripe fruit is considered to be purgative but the ripe and dried fruit has the opposite property. -- Oil from fruit applied in rheumatic swellings. Mixed with honey, fruit pulp used in opthalmia. Bark diuretic; gum demulcent and purgative.
