Distribution and habitat: Seen wild throughout India.

Botany: An erect, divaricately branched, unarmed, suffrutescent annual herb. Stem glabrous or more or less pubescent, much divaricately branched.

• Leaves : Numerous,  2.5-9 by 2-5 cm, ovate or oblong, sub-acute or acuminate, tapering into the petiole, sinuate-toothed or lobed and glabrous; petioles 2 cm long.
• Flowers : Small, 3-8, in extra-axillary drooping sub umbellate cymes, peduncles 6-20 mm long, slender. Calyx glabrous or nearly so; lobes 5, oblong, obtuse, not enlarged in fruit. Corolla divided more than ½ the way down into 5 oblong sub acute lobes. Filaments short, flattened, hairy at the base; anthers yellow, oblong, obtuse, notched at the apex. Ovary globose, glabrous; style cylindric, hairy.
• Fruits: Purplish black or reddish berries, 6 mm diameter, globose, some times yellow or red, smooth, shining.
• Seeds: Many, 1.5 mm diameter, discoid, yellow, minutely pitted.

Chemical constituents: Vitamin B&C, β-carotene, flacokinase, glycoalkaloids, solasonine and α-& β –solanigrine, steroidal genine, solasodiene, diosgenin, uttronin A, palmitic, stearic, oleic, linoleic, chlorogenic, caffeic, traces of neochlorogenic,  isochlorogenic acid and caffeoylglucose. 

Uses: The whole plant is useful in vitiated conditions of tridosha, rheumatalgia, swellings, cough, asthma, bronchitis, wounds, ulcers, flatulence, dyspepsia, strangury, hepatomegaly, otalgia, hiccough, opthalmopathy, vomiting, cardiopathy, leprosy, skin diseases, fever, splenomegaly, haemarrhoids, nephropathy, dropsy and general debility.

Formulations: Kakamachi arka, Rasaraja rasa, Siddhaphala paniyavatika, Kalkuta rasa. 

Agro technology:

Soil and Climate : They come up very well in tropical and subtropical climate up to 2000 m altitude. 

Propagation: Seeds