Rauwolfia Serpentine

INTRODUCTION

Sarpagandha is an erect, evergreen shrub, merely 15 to 45 cm high. Its leaves are large, in whorls of three - dark green above and pale green below. The flowers are white, pinkish or red, occurring in whorls. Its fruit are tiny, oval, fleshy which turn a shiny purple-black when ripe. It is the roots of the plant that are mainly used for medicinal purposes. 

Botany: An erect perennial shrub with a long, irregularly, nodular, yellowish root stock.

Leaves: In whorls of 3, thin, lanceolate, acute, bright green above and pale beneath.

Flowers: in irregular corymbose cymes, white, often tinged with violet.

Fruit: Drupe, single or didymous, shining black, the inflorescenece with red pedicels and calyx and white corolla.

Flowering Time: March to May in Indian conditions.

USES

This plant is used medicinally both in the Modern Western Medical system and also in Ayurveda, unani and folk medicine. It helps to reduce blood pressure, depresses activity of central nervous system and acts as a hypnotic. Snakeroot depletes catecholamines and serotonin from nerves in central nervous system. Refined snakeroot has been used extensively in recent years to treat hypertension. It is used as an antidote to the bites of poisonous reptile like snakes. It is also used to treat dysentery and other painful affections of the intestinal canal.