English : Indian water chestnut/Singhara nut

Urdu : Sighara/Singara

Telugu : Kubyakama/Pani-godda/Parike-gadda

Description :

It is an auatic herb on the water surface of lakes, tanks and pools in kashmir and also other parts of India. It is also cultivated for its fruits.Stems long, flexuose, ascending in the water,sub-merged portions, possessing pairs of green pectinate spreading organs at intervals below the margins of leaf scars, leaves floating, croweded at the upper parts of stems , flowers white opening above the surface of water. Fruits bony, turbinate 2-4 cm long and broad, 4-angled , 2 opposite angles. Each with a scabrous spine , 2 other spines obsolete indehiscent 1-seeded; seeds white starchy.

The fresh ,tender kernels are sweet and delicious, nutritious and good source of minerals and vitamins. They are eaten raw when tender and fresh or after cooking or boiling and roasting.

Action and Uses:

Fruit Kernels are cooling, constipating , styptic, flatulent , semen-forming ,semen-thickening and tonic.

They  are used to quench the thirst and subside dryness of mouth and throat.They are beneficially used in leucorrhoea, spermatorrhoea,premature ejuculation , watery semen, diarrhoea and billiousness and also menorrhagia.