Phyllanthus emblica L. (EUPHORBIACEAE)
Common names
Kannada: Bettada nelli kaayi, Nelli kai.
Tulu: Nellikai.
Sanskrit: Aamalaka.
Malayalam & Tamil: Nelli.
Telugu: Usiriki.
Description: Small or medium-sized deciduous trees. Leaves subsessile, distichous, closely set along the branchlets, linear-oblong, ca 1 x 0.2 cm, truncate or subcordate at base, apiculate obtuse at apex glaucous beneath. Flowers in axillary fascicles, greenish yellow; male flowers numerous, female flowers few. Perianth lobes 6. Stamens 3; filaments connate into a column. The ovary is 3-celled, and the style arms are twice bifid. The fruits are globose, around 1.5 cm across, fleshy, exhibiting 6 obscure vertical furrows, and are greenish-yellow. There are 6 seeds.
Flowering : January – March.
Fruiting : September.
Distribution: India: Throughout tropical India on open grasslands and in deciduous forests. Sri Lanka, Malaya Islands, China.
Uses: The fruit is edible, acid at first then sweet. It is rich in vitamin C and minerals. It is made into a sweet meat with sugar and used as a pickle. Wood is useful for poles, agricultural implements and furniture. Fresh root galactogenic, given in jaundice; bark astringent, deobstruent, febrifuge, antiseptic, used in stomach troubles like diarrhoea, dysentery, dyspepsia, colic, also used in dropsy and diseases of urino-genital system; latex used in opthalmia; latex, leaf and root used in oedematous swelling and ulcers; leaf stomachic and diuretic. Fresh root given in digestive troubles of cattle.
