JUSTICIA ADHATODA (Just. ad.)

Botanical name : Adhatoda vasica Nees. Family: Acanthaceae

Synonym : Justicia adhatoda Linn.

Common names : Hindi: Adulasa, Vasaka.

Description : A dense evergreen, often gregarious shrub, 1 to 2.5 m high. Stem with yellowish bark, terete, glabrous, branches, many ascending leaves 12 to 20 cm long, elliptic-lanceolate, acuminate, tapering to the base, minutely puberulous, dark-green above; pale beneath. Flowers in short dense auxillary preduncled spikes 2.5 to 7.5 cm long, arranged towards ends of the branches; peduncles stout, shorter than leaves; bracts upto 22 mm long, elliptic, sub-acute glabrous or nearly so, 5 to 7 nerved, closely reticulate, bracteoles 18 mm long, 1-nerved, margin ciliate. Calyx 8 to 12 mm long, hairy outside, tube 12 mm long, upper half much inflated laterally, upper lip curved, mottled, lower lip as long as the upper lobes, oblong, rounded. Filaments hairy at the base, the lower anther cells speculate (not spurred) at the base. Ovary and lower position of style hairy. Capsule 18 mm or more in length, clavate, pubescent. Seeds orbicular.

Microscopical : Leaves, in the surface view epidermal cells are sinnuous with caryophyllaceous stomata on both surfaces, more numerous on the lower, clothing trichomes few, 1 to 3 rarely upto 5-celled, thin walled uniseriate upto 500 µ and glandular trichomes with unicellular stalk and 4 celled head; measuring 25 to 36 µ in diameter in surface view, cystoliths in mesophyll layers, elongated and cigar shaped, calcium oxalate crystals in acicular and prismatic forms in mesophyll; palisade ratio, 5 to 6.5 to 8.5, stomatal index, 10.8 to 14.2 to 18.1 for lower surface.

Habitat : Throughout India in plains and in sub-Himalayan tracts ascending upto 1,200 meter.

History and authority : Drugs of Hindoosthan by Dr. S. C. Ghose.

Part used : Leaves. Moisture content of fresh leaves 270 ml per 100 g solids.

Preparation : (a) Mother Tincture φ Drug strength 1/10 Justica Adhatoda, moist magma containing solids 100 g and plant moisture 270 ml 370 g Strong Alcohol 900 ml to make one thousand millilitres of the Mother Tincture.

(b) Potencies: 2x and higher with Dispensing Alcohol.