FoI
Woolly Dicoma
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Woolly Dicoma
A Native Photo: Siddarth Machado
Common name: Woolly Dicoma • Hindi: Vajardanti • Kannada: ನವನಂಜಿ Navananji, ಸನ್ನಿಗಿಡ Sanni gida • Marathi: Navananji chapala
Botanical name: Dicoma tomentosa    Family: Asteraceae (Sunflower family)
Synonyms: Acilepis lanata, Dicoma gnaphaloides, Dicoma lanuginosa

Woolly Dicoma is an erect, white wooly, annual herb, growing up to 7.5-31.0 cm tall, woody at base. Stem is round, much branched, tinged purplish. Leaves are stalkless, blade tapering at base, linear, linear-lanceshaped, oblong-inverted-lanceshaped, surfaces densely white, wooly below sparsely wooly above, margins serrulate or entire. Flower-heads are numerous, stalkless or shortly stalked, involucral bracts are 4-5 seriate, overlapping, rough, pale-yellow, brownish-tinged spines, linear-oblong, margins scarious. Flowers are tubular-bell-shaped, tube 5 lobed, divided more than half of the flower length, pointed, curled. Anthers barbellate, tip pointed. Style 0.5 cm long, cypsels pale-brown, 10-ribbed, base wedge-shaped, densely silky-hairy. Flowering: September-October.
Medicinal uses: Root is used for toothache. Whole plant is useful in febrile attacks to which women are prone to after child birth. The plant is applied as a dressing to septic wounds, and is used in a fumigation to relieve skin-itch. The leaves and fruit are burnt in a hole over which the patient squats when treating pain in the testicles.

Identification credit: Navendu Pāgé Photographed in Anantapur District, Andhra Pradesh.

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