Bio Diversity Park

Common Name : Indian Gooseberry

Hindi Name : आंवला | Scientific Name : Phyllanthus emblica
Family : Phyllanthaceae
Uses : The fruit is highly medicinal and is edible fresh, pickled or cooked. It is one of the highly esteemed fruits in the Indian system of medicine and is included in many formulations. The fruit is rich in vitamin C and immuno-modulators. The fruit is used either alone or in combination with other plants to treat many ailments such as common cold and fever; as a diuretic, laxative, liver tonic, refrigerant, stomachic, restorative, alterative, antipyretic, anti-inflammatory, hair tonic; to prevent peptic ulcer and dyspepsia, and as a digestive.
Native: India and Southeast Asia regions
General Description:

Deciduous trees, to 15m high, bark grey-brown, rough, irregularly flaking; blaze pink-red. Leaves simple, alternate, bifarious on short deciduous branchlets, closely overlapping, subsessile; stipules minute, lateral, linear; lamina 0.4-1.5 x 2-4mm, oblong or linear-oblong, base round, apex obtuse and shortly apiculate, glabrous, membranous; nerves obscure. Flowers unisexual, 2-3mm across, greenish-yellow, densely clustered in leaf axils; male flowers: tepals 6, oblanceolate, 1.5 mm, obtuse, stamens 3, anthers oblong, connate by their connectives; apiculate; disc glands 6; female flowers: tepals 6, oblanceolate, obtuse; ovary superior, 1.5mm, 3-celled; ovules 2 in each cell; styles 3, broadly fimbriate, recurved, stigmatiferous. Fruit a capsule 1.5-2.5cm across, sub-globose, dehiscing into 6 cocci, disc enlarged to give an appearance of fleshy yellowish-green, indehiscent berry.