Page:Indian Medicinal Plants (Text Part 1).djvu/106

the larger tangentially flattened to horse-shoe-shaped; mother-tubers, with often numerous root-fibres much shrunk, grooved and wrinkled with conical stumps (root-fibre bases), collapsed. Innovation-bud a much depressed, broad, obtuse cone or hemisphere, scales broad with a clasping base usually decaying after sprouting. Stem erect, several feet high, straight, robust, simple, terete, delicately pubescent in the upper part, otherwise usually quite glabrous. Leaves scattered, 6-10, the lowest decayed at the time of flowering, intermediate and upper leaves rather distant, pubescent when young, at length glabrous, with the exception of the nerves below, lower petioles up to 7·5 cm. long, intermediate and upper much shorter, somewhat dilated at the base; blades dark-green above, paler below, orbicular or ovate-cordate or subreniform, with narrow or wide sinus, 1-2 cm. deep, 7-9 cm. from the sinus to the tip, 10-12 cm. across, 3-partite to 7/8, intermediate division rhomboid-ovate from a broad cuneate base, 3-lobed to the middle, middle lobe much larger than the lateral, lateral divisions trapezoid, very unequally 2-lobed to the middle, all the lobes coarsely inciso-crenate or dentate, crense, spiculate or acute. Inflorescence straight, racemose narrow, up to 30 cm. long, many-flowered, rather dense, yellowish-tomentellous, and slightly viscous; lowest bracts resembling the preceding leaves, following ovate or lanceolate, inciso-dentate, or dentate, uppermost often entire; pedicels erect or the lower ascending, lowest up to 5 cm., upper 2·5 cm. long; bracteoles, if any, inciso-dentate, or dentate, small. Sepals blue, pubescent; uppermost helmet-shaped, helmet oblique, sub-semi-orbicular in profile, slightly concave in front and shortly beaked, about 20 mm. high and 20 mm. from tip to base, 10-13 mm. wide, very shortly and broadly clawed, lateral sepals sub-oblique or orbicular or slightly broader than long, up to 16 mm. long, obscurely clawed; lower sepals elliptic or broad-oblong, obtuse, 12-14 mm. long. Nectaries glabrous, claw erect, or slightly curved, 12-13 mm. long; hood leaning forward, rather crenulate. Filaments hispidulous in the upper part or almost glabrous, 6 mm. long, broadly winged to beyond the middle, wings gradually or abruptly running out. Carpels 5, oblong, yellowish-tomentose, conniving in the flower, then slightly divergent. Follicles oblong, slightly divergent