Botanical Name : Withania somnifera
Sanskrit Name : Ashvagandha                                         
English Name : Winter cherry   
Family : Solanaceae                                   
Part Used: Root            

Description of Withania somnifera:
It is tomentose under-shrub. The taproot is well developed, stout and fleshy. The leaves are ovate, sub-acute and pubescent. Flowers are greenish or lirud yellow. Corolla is divided rather more than ½ way down. Berry is red enclosed in the inflated calyx. The seed are reniform and yellow.

W.somnifera is an erect, evergreen, tomentose shrub. The roots are stout, fleshy and whitish brown; the leaves are simple ovate, glabrous; the flowers are inconspicuous, greenish or lurid-yellow, in axillary, umbellate cymes; the berries are globose, orange-red when mature, enclosed in the persistent calyx and have yellow, reniform seeds.

Principal Constituents:
Biochemically heterogeneous alkaloids including cuscohygrine, anahygrine, tropine, pseudotropine, anaferine. The plant has steroidal lactones - withanolides, withaferin, which are estrogenic compounds

Medicinal Uses:
Aswagandha is used in asthma and as a uterine sedative. The total alkaloids showed relaxant and antispasmodic effects against several spasmogens on intestinal, uterine, bronchial, tracheal and blood-vascular muscles.

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