Description

Blue-flowered glory tree commonly known as the blue fountain bush, the  or the beetle killer, is a species of flowering plants in the family Lamiaceae. It is native to India, Sri Lanka and Malaysia.

Characteristics:

A shrub or an undershrub with woody root stock, young branches quadrangular. Leaves have a foetid smell, oblong-ovate or elliptic oblong, coarsely serrate, acuminate, coriaceous, deep green. Flowers light red with tinge of violate in cyme inflorescence. Bracts persistant, corolla lobes 4, older one longer than the others. Fruit is drupe and become black when ripe. Flowers are large pinkish-white in colour and numerous appearing in May to August month. It has a stout deflexed compressed pedicel in lax, dichotomous, long terminal panicles. It has leafy bracts and the calyx is cup shaped 5 mm long. Corolla is pale to pinkish blue with tube about 6-7 mm long; the lower larger lip like lobe is sky blue in colour. Stamens are long, exerted, curved and bluish. The drupes are 1-4 lobed, bluish-black and glossy.

Medicinal Uses:

Root is useful in asthma, cough and scrofulous affections. It is given in fever and is useful in sinusitis. Juice of leaves is used with ghee as an application to herpetic eruptions and pemphigus. Leaves are vermifuge and bitter tonic. The root is one of the five ingredients of Brahata panchamool and has a large demand. The plant is considered as antitoxic, antiseptic, astringent and styptic. The plant is also used in Ayurveda for snake bites.