Distribution & Habitat: Tropical plant seen all over Bengal and many other parts of India.

Botany: A large shrub with very thick finely downy branches. 

• Leaves: Subsessile, 30-60 cm long. Leaflets 8-12 pairs, oblong obtuse, 5-15 cm long, minutely mucronate, rigidly subcoriaceous, glabrous, or obscurely downy beneath, broadly rounded, oblique at the base. Rachis narrowly winged on each side of the face. Stipules deltoid, rigid, persistent, articulate, 6 mm long.
• Flowers: In short pedicels, in piciform, pedunculate racemes; the buds in yellow caducous bracts. Sepals obtuse; petals bright yellow, with darker veins, broad-ovate, 3.2 cm long. Stamens very unequal. Perfect stamens 7, the anthers subequal or those of 2-3 lowest larger than the others. Three posterior filaments without anthers.
• Pod: Broad, ligulate with a winged broad wing down the middle of each valve, membranous, dehiscent, straight and glabrous; 10-20 to 1.3-1.6 cm. Seeds 50 or more.

Chemical constituents: Plant contain Crysophanic acid, chrysophanol, emodin, rhein and aloe-emodin. Leaves contain kaempferol and aloe-emodin and a volatile oil. Roots have quinone pigments. Seeds yield galactomannan, emodin, aloe-emodin, β-sitosterol.

Properties: Dried leaves are used as purgatives. Extracts of aerial parts are neuro tonic, diuretic and anti-inflammatory. 

Uses: Paste & ointment is used in ring worm, skin infections. Decoction of leaves used in herpes, skin diseases, venereal affections, all poisonous insects bites and efficacious applications

Propagation: seeds.