Botanical Name : Bombax ceiba
Sanskrit name : Shalmali
English Name: Silk Cotton Tree
Family:    Bombacaceae         

Description of Bombax ceiba:

It is found in India, Burma and Sri Lanka. It grows throughout the hotter parts of India, Eastern Himalayas and is abundant in Assam, Andaman and West Bengal.

A large sized tall, deciduous tree having straight, buttressed trunk with a clear bole and widespread branches. The trunk and branch bark is gray in colour having hard, sharp and conical prickles. Leaves are large, deciduous, digitate and glabrous. Leaflets 3-9, entire, lanceolate or oval, cuspidate and tip is acute. Petiole is long (up to 20 cm), petiolules 1,2-2.5 cm long, and stipules small and caducous. Flowers solitary or clustered, axillary or sub-terminal, fascicles at or near the ends of the branches, when the tree is bare of leaves. Calyx is cup-shaped usually 3 lobed. Corolla red or white, petals 5, oblong, recurved, fleshy, tomentose on the out side and sparingly pubescent inner. Staminal tube is short, more than 60 in 5 bundles. Ovary conical, glabrous, stigma 5, capsule ovoid, 5 valued dehiscing by 5 leathery, woody valves and lined with white silky hairs. Seeds are numerous, long, ovoid, black or gray in colour and packed in white cotton.

Principal Constituents

Preliminary tests show the presence of glycosides and tannins from root, stem and leaf. In the stem some alkaloids and in root proteins are identified. The stem bark contains lupeol and b-sitostrol The root bark has 3 naphthalene derivatives related to gossypol (toxic principle of cotton seed) and called as 'semigossypol'. Flowers contain b-sitosterol, traces of essential oil, kaempherol and quercetin. On hydrolysis gum yield arabinose, galactose, galacturonic acid and rhamnose.

Pharmacology
Aqueous extract has moderate oxytoxic activity on gravid and non-gravid isolated rat uteri and guinea pig and rabbit uterine strips. It has musculotrapic action in guinea pig ileum and cardiac stimulant action on frog's heart. It has a negligible blood-pressure elevating action in anaesthetized dog.

Toxicology:

No adverse effect is reported on use of the plant as a drug.

Medicinal Uses:

The gum has aphrodisiac, astringent, demulcent, haemoptysis of pulmonary tuberculosis and influenza, malaena and menorrhagia and acute dysentery with beneficial results. Flowers are used for haemorrhoids. Root has stimulant, tonic and aphrodisiac properties.

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