इक्षुगन्धिका – Tribulus terrestris

 

Name – गॊक्षुरः

Botanical name – Tribulus terrestris

Description – Procumbent herbs with slender, cylindrical, light brown, aromatic roots and densely covered with minute hair. Leaves paripinnate; leaflets oblong, mucronate in opposite pairs, compound; leaflets 4-7 pairs, 8-12 mm long. Flowers bright yellow, axillary, solitary opposite to the leaves or in axils of leaves. Fruit globose of 5 to 12 woody cocci, each coccus with a pair of hard unequal spines. Fruits often cling to clothes, bodies of animals and wheels of vehicles.

Chemical Constituents- Herb contains diosgenin, gitogenin and chlorogenin. Roots contain trillin, diosgenin. Aerial parts contain steroidal glycosides neohecogenin, tribulosin along with Beta- sitosterol, beta-D-glucoside and dioscin, diosgenin, ruscogenin, saponin. Stem contains polysaccharides. Leaves contain glycosides. Fruits and leaves contain kaempferol, its 3-glucoside, its 3-rutinoside and tribuloside. Flowers contain diosgenin, hecogenin, ruscogenin, spirosta-3,5-diene, steroidal sapogenins, kaempferol and quercetin.

Use – The fruits are useful in urinary complaints and sexual weakness. It is cooling. An infusion of the fruits is useful in gout and diseases of kidney; it promotes urination. –Fruits tonic and diuretic, used in painful micturation and calculous affections; also prescribed in Brights disease. Leaves stomachic, used as lithotriptic. Roots aperient.