A large, perennial, glabrous herb, 0.9-2.7 m high. Rootstocks stout, sometimes stoloniferous, producing in dry season dark-coloured, hard, globose tubers, clothed and matted with fibres, leaves radical, 60-90 cm. x 13 mm; spikelets sub-globosely ovoid, 4-10 mm long, in corymbiform decompound, terminal umbels, nuts obovoid, 2 mm long, ash-grey or black.

Astringent, laxative, tonic, cooling and diuretic (tubers)

Steroids (including progesterone) and saponins.

As a tonic, for stopping vomiting and diarrhoea, in constipation and oedema (tubers)

Chandel et al., Biodiversity in Medicinal and Aromatic Plants in India.