KARAFS
English : Apium/Celery
Urdu : Karafs
Telugu : Ajamonda
Description :
This is a biennial or annual herb with erect and branching stem 0.3-2.4 m high,pinnate and deeply-lobed leaves,small and white flowers,and small fruits containing minute seed.
Fruit is 1-1.5 mm long, 1.5 mm broad and 0.5 mm thick,sub spherical and laterally compressed having characterstic aromatic odour and taste.
Action and Uses:
Celery leaves are warming vegetable having carminative,digestive, and anti-sposmodic properties. It is eatable and also used as medicine for thetreatement of cold.rhinitis, chest affections, gastro-intestinal,upset,flatulent,colic,hiccough,asthma and rheumatic pains.
Celery seeds and root are warming,resolvent,deobtruent,diaphoretic,expectorant, anti-spasmodic, diuretic and emmenagogue and lithontroptic.
They are benefecially used in phlegmatic diseases,rheumatic pains,gout,sciatica and backachitis and asthma, fevers, uterine colic, amenorrhoea, retension of urine, crystalluria and renal stones.
Ibn Sina’s View:
It is carminative,deobstruent,diaphoretic and anodyne. It is useful in cough and asthma.Seeds are good for ascites and dropsy.Also diuretic and emmenagogue. Useful in all stages of fevers.