Pharmacographia : a history of the principal drugs of vegetable origin, met with in Great Britain and British India / by Friedrich A. Flückiger and Daniel Hanbury.

Flückiger, Friedrich A. (Friedrich August), 1828-1894.

Date:: 1874

Credit: Pharmacographia : a history of the principal drugs of vegetable origin, met with in Great Britain and British India / by Friedrich A. Flückiger and Daniel Hanbury. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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$and described by M^rat and De Lens,^ Pereira, and other writers of repute. Guibourt indeed pointed out in 1850 its great dissimilarity to the bark of Drimys and questioned if it could be derived from that genua. It is a strange fact that the tree should have been confounded with Canclla alba L., differing from it as it does in the most obvious manner, not only in form of leaf, but in having the ilowers axillary, whereas those of C. alba are terminal. Although Cinnamodendron corticosum is - a tree sometimes as much as 90 feet high2 and must have been ^yell known in Jamaica for more than a century, yet it had no botanical name until 1858 when it was described by Miers^ and referred to the. small genus Cinnamodendron which is closely allied to Canella. The bark of Cinnamodendron has the general structure of Canella alba. There is the same thin corky outer coat (which is not removed) dotted with round scars, the same form of quills and fracture. But the tint is different, being more or less of a ferruginous brown. The inner surface which is a little more fibrous than in canella, varies in colour, being yellowish, brown, or of a deep chocolate. The bark is violently pungent but not bitter, and has a very agreeable cinnamon-like odour. In microscopic structure it approaches very close to canella ; yet the thick-walled ceUs of the latter exist to a much larger extent and are here seen to belong to the suberous tissue. The medullary rays are loaded with oxalate of calcium. x j 4-- Cinnamodendron bark has not been analysed. Its decoction is blackened by a persalt of iron whereby it may be distinguished from Canella alba; and is coloured intense purplish brown by lodme, which is not the case with % decoction of true Winter's Bark. FRUCTUS ANISI STELLATI. Semen Badiani * ; Star-Anise; F. Badiane, Anis 4toiU; G. Sternanis. Botanical Ovigin—IlUcium anisatum Loureiro (/. religiosum Sieb.). A smaU tree, 20 to 25 feet high, native of the south-western provmces ot CW ; introduced at an early period into Japan by the Buddhists and ^'^tipf^fin^t Sin Japan towards the end of the 17th century discovered a tree called Somo or Shimmi^ which subsequent authors^ a sumed to be the source of the drug Star-anise. The tree was ^so found, in J^an bv Thunberg« who remarked that its capsules are not so aro- matic as those found in trade. Von Siebold in 1825 noticed the same. Zt in consrquence of which he regarded the tree as distinct from that of fotSrrXg i? Illicium Japonicum, a name he afterwards changed ^Cl rdi^^^^^^ Baillon who has recently investigated je while admitting certain differences between the fruits of the Chinese andl . As shown by De Lens' ow. speci:nen [^4^,-^^^^^^^ of drugs belonging to the Koyal College ot ^ ^^^^ japmica, 1784. 235. ''VSebkch calls it a low shinabbv tree,. J ~' .t'lsV 10--15 feet high. Mr. N. Wilson, late of Magnohace<,'>, 1868. 154. the Bath Botanic Garden, Jamaica, has m-$