Latin Name : Fumaria officinalis
English Name : Fumitory
Ayurvedic Name : Pitpapra or Pitpada
Family : Fumariaceae.
This is an annual glucous plant, with a sub-erect, much-branched, spreading, leafy, angular stem, growing from 10 to 15 inches high. The leaves are mostly alternate, bipinnate, or tripinnate; the leaflets are wedge-shaped, cut into flat, lanceolate segments. The flowers are small, flesh-colored, tipped with crimson, nodding, the pedicles becoming erect in fruit. The racemes are opposite to the leaves, stalked, erect, many-flowered, and rather lax. The bracts are lanceolate, acute, and not half the length of the pedicles, especially when in fruit. Petals 4, unequal, one of them with a short, rounded spur at the base. The calyx is colored, toothed, and deciduous. The fruit or nut is ovoid or globose, indehiscent, emarginate, 1-seeded, and valveless, and the seed crestless (W.-G.).
This plant was not indigenous to India but it was imported from Persia. The plant bears red flowers in June and July. The leaves, which are generally used, have no odor, but a bitterish taste, and, when fresh, furnish a large quantity of an aqueous, bitter, and inodorous juice, which possesses their therapeutical properties, and which is soluble in water, wine, or alcohol.
The most prominent constituents of fumitory are an alkaloid fumarine, fumaric acid, and considerable amounts of inorganic matter, especially potassium salts.
Action, Medical Uses, and Dosage: It is a weak tonic, very much used in cutaneous diseases, in jaundice, obstructions of the abdominal viscera, scurvy, and in cases of debility of the digestive organs (E. and V.). It is also slightly diaphoretic and aperient. With black pepper it is given in Jaundice, Skin diseases to purify the blood.
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