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Medicinal plants are nature's gift to human being to have disease-free healthy life. It plays a vital role to preserve our health. India is one of the most medico-culturally diverse countries in the world where the medicinal plant sector is part of a time honoured tradition that is respected even today. Medicinal plants are believed to be much safer. In our country, more than 2000 medicinal plants have been recognized. Bauhinia purpurea Linn. (Caesalpinaceae; butterfly tree) is an important medicinal plant with various traditional uses. The present article including the detailed exploration of phyto-pharmacological properties of B. purpurea is an attempt to provide a direction for further research.
INTRODUCTION
Bauhinia Linn. (Caesalpinaceae) is a genus of shrubs or trees, very rarely climbers, distributed throughout the tropical regions of the world. About 15 species occur in India (Anonymous, 1998).Bauhinias are chiefly propagated from seeds; vegetative propagation except inarching has not shown much success. The seeds are sown in pockets of good soil and thereafter protected from damage. Watering is required during the dry spells (Anonymous, 1998).
Useful products such as tannin, fibre, gum and oil are obtained from Bauhinia species. Many species are grown as ornamental plants (Anonymous, 1998). One of the important species of this genus is Bauhinia purpurea. Bauhinia purpurea Linn. is a flowering plant, native to South China, Malaysia and India. The plant is popularly known as khairwal (or butterfly tree) in India, where the leaves of the plant are used mainly as plates for serving meal (Anonymous, 2004). The detailed exploration of phyto-pharmacological propertires of this plant has been described below (Anonymous, 2004).
Scientific Classification
Kingdom Plantae
Division Magnoliophyta
Class Magnoliopsida
Order Fabales
Family Fabaceae
Subfamily Caesalpinioideae
Tribe Cercideae
Genus Bauhinia
Species B. purpurea
MORPHOLOGICAL CHARACTERS
A medium sized, evergreen, ornamental tree, found throughout India, ascending at an altitude of 1300 m in the sub-Himalayan tract.
Bark - dark grey or brown, pink to pale yellow inside.
Leaves - rigidly sub-coriaceous, glabrous, shallowly cordate.
Flowers- varying in colour from white to purple; terminal and axillary short- peduncled, few flowered corymbs. (Anonymous, 2004)
TRADITIONAL USES
Traditionally this plant is used in the treatment of dropsy, pain, rheumatism, convulsions, delirium, septicemia and so on (Asolker et al., 2000). The root is carminative. The...