_Indian Persimmon._
=Botanical Origin=—_Diospyros Embryopteris_ Pers. (_Embryopteris
glutinifera_ Roxb.), a middle-sized or large evergreen tree, native
of the western coast of India, Ceylon, Bengal, Burma, Siam, and also
Java.[1469]
=History=—The tree, which is mentioned in the earliest epic poems of
the Sanskrit literature under the name of _tinduka_,[1470] was also
known about the year 1680 to Rheede, and was figured in his _Hortus
Malabaricus_.[1471] The circumstance that the unripe fruit abounds in
an astringent viscid juice which is used by the natives of India for
daubing the bottoms of boats, was communicated by Sir William Jones to
Roxburgh in 1791. The introduction of the fruit into medicine, which is
due to O’Shaughnessy,[1472] has been followed by its admission to the
_Pharmacopœia of India_, 1868.
=Description=—The fruit is usually solitary, subsessile or pedunculate,
globular or ovoid, 1½ to 2 inches long, and as much as 1½ inch in
diameter, surrounded at the base by a large and deeply 4-lobed calyx.
It is of a yellowish colour, covered with a rusty tomentum; internally
it is pulpy, 6-to 10-celled, with thin flat solitary seeds. The
fruit is used only in the unripe and fresh state; the pulp is then
excessively astringent. At maturity, in the month of April near Bombay,
the fruit becomes eatable, but is very little appreciated.
=Chemical Composition=—No analysis has been made of this fruit, but
there can be no doubt that in common with that of other species of
_Diospyros_, it is, when immature, rich in tannic acid. Charropin
(1873),[1473] who has examined the fruit of the American _D.
virginiana_ L., found it to contain a tannic acid which he considered
identical with that of nutgalls, besides an abundance of pectin,
glucose, and a yellow colouring matter insoluble in water but
dissolving freely in ether.
=Uses=—The inspissated juice has been recommended as an astringent in
diarrhœa and chronic dysentery.
[1469] Fig. in Bentley and Trimen, _Med. Plants_, part 18 (1877).
[1470] As we learn from Dr. Rice.—Prof. Dymock (1876) gives _Timbooree_
as the Bombay name.
[1471] Tom. iii. tab. 41.
[1472] _Bengal Dispensatory_, Calcutta, 1842. 428.
[1473] _Etude sur le Plaqueminier_ (_Diospyros_), thèse, Paris, 1873.
28-30.