CALENDULA OFFICINALIS
(Calend.)
     

Bot. Name :

   Calendula officinalis Linn.
     
Synonyms :
   Hindi : Zerzul; English : Garden Marigold; French : Fleur detous les mois ; German : Rinjelblume.
     
Description :
        A more or less hairy annual, 30-660 cm high. Leaves thickish, oblong obovate, 5 to 15 cm or more long, entire or minutely and veinately denticulate, more or less clasping. Heads solitary on stout stalks, showy, 4.5 or 10 cm across, the flat spreading rays white yellow to deep orange; closing at night. Sometimes the plant is proliferous from the involucre bearing several peduncled head in a circle. Involucre broad usually scarious margined bracts in 1 or 2 rows, receptacle naked; ray-achenes glabrous, incurved, disk flowers unfertile, pappus none.
 
     
Microscopical :
        Fragments of corolla, mounted in water or chloral hydrate, and in the Transverse Section, exhibits elongated epidermal cells with striated cuticle, the parenchyma cells beneath showing numerous often yellow, oil globules and irregular chromo-plastids, on the vicinity of the tube will be noted a few long non-glandular hairs, consisting of a double row of thin walled, more or , less collapsed cells with a 1 or 2 celled summit and up to about 950 m in length coarsing through the mesophyll will be noted, strands of fibro-vascular tissue, each possessing an annular and spiral trachea, Spinose pollen grains, 3 pored, and up to 45 m in diameter will be noted adhering to the corolla.
     
Habitat :
   It is cultivated in India.
     
History and Authority :
   Allen's Encyclop. Mat. Med. Vol. II, 419.
     
Parts Used :
   Fresh flowering tops and leaves.
       
Preparation :
  
(a) Mother Tincture j
Drug strength 1/10
       
    Calendula Officinalis moist magma containing solids 100g and plants moisture appx. 600 ml

700 g
       
    Strong Alcohol
4347ml
     
    To make one thousand milliliters of the Mother Tincture.
       
   
(b) Potencies :
  
     
         2x to contain one part Mother Tincture, four parts Purified Water, five parts Strong Alcohol. 3x and higher with dispensing alcohol.