English : Emblica/Embic myrobalan/Indian gooseberry
Urdu : Amla/Aamla/Aonia
Telugu : Amalakamu/Usirikaia
Description :
It is a small or medium-sized deciduous tree with smooth,greenish-grey,exfoliating bark. Leaves feathey with small leaflets and flowers greenish yellow,usually below the leaves. Fruits depressed globose and obscurely 6-lobed containing and 6-trigonous seeds. They are green when tender and light yellow or brick red color when mature. They are sour and astrigent.
Action and uses:
The fresh fruit is tonic,refrigerant,diuretic,anti-bilious,lexative and anti-scorbutic. It is useful in hiccup,vomiting,indigestion,tabkheer,habitual consipation and scurvy.
The dried fruit is an excellent astrigent,styptic,stomachic,cooling.blood purifier,diuretic,liver and brain tonic.It was widely used in indigestion,diarrhoea and acute dysentery,enlargement of liver and ascites,weakness of heart and palpitation,anxiety states and melancholia. It improves eye-sight and brain faculities eg.memory and intelligence.
It is beneficially used in excessive thirst,fevers of sanguine and bilious humours burning micutation and chronic gonorrhoea.
It is used as head shampoo and scalp paste.Its oil has reputation of being one of the best hair tonics.
Ibn Sina’s view:
It is a tonic for stomach,heart and eye;thirst-quenching and anti-emetic.It improves apetite and also eye-sight.It blackens the hairs and strengthens their root. It is very useful in haemorrhoids.