Bio Diversity Park

Common Name : Flame of the Forest

Hindi Name : पलाश | Scientific Name : Butea monosperma
Family : Fabaceae
Uses : The fruits and sprouts are used in folk remedies for abdominal tumours in India. Ayurvedic medicine described the bark as anthelmintic and useful in abdominal enlargement; ascites; biliousness; diseases of the eye, skin, and vagina; itch; piles; splenomegaly; tumours; ulcers; and wounds. The bark is used internally for bleeding piles and beriberi. In the Unani system, seed ash is used to strengthen the teeth. Seeds are carminative and depurative and are used for chest complaints, chronic fevers, earache, hydrocele, and lumbago. In India, the seeds are used for skin ailments; keratitis; piles; urinary discharges; and diseases of the brain, eye, head, and skin. The juice from the plant as well as the oil is antiseptic. It is an excellent remedy for itch and herpes. The seeds are hematinic, bitter, and acrid. Today, the oil is used as a liniment for rheumatism. The seeds and seed oil used for their carminative, antiseptic, anthelmintic and antirheumatic effects and are beneficial for biliousness, eye ailments, itch, leukoderma, rheumatism, skin disease, worms, and wounds. The powdered seeds are used as a febrifuge and tonic and in bronchitis and whopping cough. The seed oil is styptic and depurative. The leaves are used for their anthelmintic, digestive, and laxative effects and for inflammations, piles, and wounds. Their juice is used for cold, coughs, diarrhoea, dyspepsia, flatulence, gonorrhoea, and leprosy. The leaves have digestive, laxative, antidiarrheal, anti-gonorrhoeic, and antileprotic properties. The flowers are used for diabetes and biliousness. Roots are used for cleaning gums, teeth, and ulcers. Juice of the root is used for cleansing foul ulcers and closing fistulous sores. Young shoots have been recommended for rheumatism.
Native: India and Sri Lanka
General Description:

It is a deciduous tree, to 10m high, bole crooked, irregular; bark 5-6mm thick, grey to greyish-brown; exudation red; branchlets densely tomentose. Leaves trifoliate, alternate; stipules small, lateral, cauducous; rachis 12-20cm long, stout, pubescent, pulvinate; stipels subulate; petiole 5-10mm long, stout, pubescent; lateral leaflets 8.8-13.7x5.5-11cm, broadly oblong-ovate or suborbicular, base oblique, apex obtuse, terminal leaflet 11-15x12.5-15cm, widely rhomboid, base obtuse, apex emarginate, silky pubescent on both sides when young, glabrous above, silky pubescent beneath when mature, margin entire, coriaceous; lateral nerves 4-8 pairs, pinnate, prominent; intercostae scalariform, prominent. Flowers bisexual, 5cm long, bright red, in terminal or axillary, densely fascicled, racemes; calyx broadly campanulate, teeth 5, deltoid, short, upper 2 connate, velvety; corolla much exserted; petals 5, standard petal 5x2.5cm, lanceolate, clawed, wings falcate 4.5x1.5cm adnate to keel, keel united 4.5x3cm, curved; stamens 9 + 1; vexillary stamens free; anthers uniform; ovary 2.5cm, inferior, 1-celled, ovules 2; style long, incurved, beardless; stigma small. Fruit a pod, 12.5-28cm long, oblong, the base flat, wing-like and indehiscent, the tip splitting round the apical seed; seed obovate, compressed.