Dear Ushadi In my childhood we had a cotton plant in our garden, I do not know the genus and sps. But it was called as Dev kapus. The cotton balles have seeds inside. In one variety all seeeds are joined togather to form one bundle. This is considered as good cotton? While the second one has its seeds seperate. For seperating the seeds the first one is better, Because cleaning is easy. we use to make the battis in lamps from this cotton. the plant was there atleast for 10 to 11 years as per my memory. We use to cut it to keep the proper height so that we can remove the cotton. One day it fail in rain Madhuri
--- On Tue, 6/9/11, ushadi Micromini <[email protected]> wrote: From: ushadi Micromini <[email protected]> Subject: [efloraofindia:79982] Malvaceae week 09 05 2011 UD 004 Ban Kapas Thespesia lampas Jungli Paras Piplo Kolkata 08 To: "efloraofindia" <[email protected]>, "Gurcharan Singh" <[email protected]>, "J.M. Garg" <[email protected]> Date: Tuesday, 6 September, 2011, 6:02 PM Dear All: This is a new plant for me... never knew cotton plants would go on and on for years... this one does apparently... look at its stem... its about 8 - 9 inches in diameter... I always thought cotton plants were a yearly affair... may be the agricultural pathos had brainwashed me/us... This was in a well tended herbal Garden ... for demonstration purposes to Ethnomedicine and other students.. Family : Malvaceae Species: Thespesia lampus (Cav.) Dalz. Ex. Dalz. & Gibs. ; Syn: Azanzas lampas (Cav.) Alef.; Thespesia macrophylla Blume Vernacular names : Bengali: Ban Kapas বন কাপাস Gujarati: Jungli Para piplo જંગલી પ।રસ પીપળો This specimen was about 9-10 feet tall, grew kinda straight up, had a few flowers, I went in 4 pm , so the flowers were closing, but the petal color was still beautiful pink... and a few pods high up had opened up to reveal the cotton. The leaves were varied in size... largest were 7-8 inches long. What is used is: Various tribes use differently... Some use flower paste for burn, root paste for eczema, juice of young pods on Scabies. I found it very curious that Santhals of Bengal mix juice of its stem bark and Aristolochia indica root paste on snake bite.... this we learned in class. But along a Bengal village by the Damodar river we found an old lady who said she had in the past used the root bark juice to induce miscarriage ( this is quite opposite to the effect of Thepesia populinea root bark paste effect... which says it helps women get pregnant, esp get a male child... curiouser and curiouser!!!) Come to think of it ... similar plant had been growing beyond the wall of students' garden at a Ayurvedic college... and the local young gardeners, very sheepishly asked us not to photograph it... there was so much else to learn that we did not pursue that tree... but I distinctly remember it had cotton pods.. round ones , just like this one... Thanks.. Usha di
