Common
name: Rubber Bush, apple of sodom, french cotton, sodom apple • Hindi: आक Aak, मुदर Mudar •
Kannada: bili aekka, bili aekkada gida • Malayalam: erikku, erukku • Marathi:
mandara, rui •Nepali: सेतेा Seto, आँक aank •
Sanskrit: आदित्यपुष्पिका
adityapushpika, alarka, क्षीरपर्ण
ksiraparna, मन्दरा mandara •
Tamil: vellai erukkan, vellai erukku • Telugu: erra jilledu, jilledu,
mandaaramu
Botanical
name: Calotropis procera
Family:
Asclepiadaceae (Milkweed family)
Synonyms: Asclepias
procera, Calotropis wallichii, Madorius procerus
Geographical distribution
The plant occurs throughout India. It is
commonly found in warm and dry places.
Introduction: Rubber
bush is a spreading shrub or a small tree to 4 m, oozing copious milky sap when
cut or broken. Leaves are opposite, grey-green, broadly elliptic but varying
between ovate and obovate, large up to 15 cm long and 10 cm broad, with a
pointed tip, two rounded basal lobes and no leaf stalk. Flowers are waxy white,
petals 5, purple-tipped inside and with a central purplish crown, carried in
stalked clusters at the ends of the branches. Fruit is grey-green, inflated,
8-12 cm long, containing numerous seeds with tufts of long silky hairs at one
end.
Chemical composition
The leaves and stalks contain calotropin
and calotropagenin. Latex contains uscharin, calotropin and calactin. It also
contains bitter resins akundarin, calotropin. The root contains amyrin, giganteol
and calotropeol.
Medicinal
uses: The bark and leaves are used for the treatment of leprosy and asthma,
respectively. Latex
is irritant and powdered flowers are useful in cold, cough, asthma and indigestion.
It is alterative, anodyne, antiperiodic, antispasmodic, blood-purifier, cardiac,
diaphoretic, digestive, emetic, expectorant, sedative, stomachic and
suppurative. Useful in ascites, anasarca, asthma, boils, cold, cough dysentery,
eczema, eruptive skin diseases, indigestion, earache, enlargement of spleen,
elephantiasis and leprosy, eye trouble, piles toothache and worms. Extract of
roots and leaves is anti-cancerous used in lupus, tuberculosis leprosy, syphilis
and rheumatism. The root bark is a cholagogue, diaphoretic, emetic, alterative and
diuretic.
Folk medicinal uses
The leaves are used in dropsy and
enlargement of the abdominal viscera; the ash obtained by roasting the leaves
with rock salt in a closed vessel is given with buttermilk. An extract of the
leaves is prescribed in one to five drop doses in intermittent fevers; it is
poisonous in larger doses. The leaf juice is applied to aphthous sores in the
mouth of children and skin diseases. The milky juice of the plant is used in
leprosy, taenia, dropsy, rheumatism etc. it is known as vegetable mercury
because of its usefulness in typhus and syphilis; it is an efficient substitute
for ipecacuanha. As an abortifacient it is either taken internally or applied
to the mouth of the uterus.
Flowers buds of ank are mixed with
15-gm. gur and given for 3-4 days, once a day, in cases of malaria. As a
measure against hydrophobia after dog-bite, 10-11 flowers are ground and given
with sugar once daily for 3 days.
Preparations
Arka-laban, arka-taila and
arkeswar.
Flowers
and Fruits : March-July
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