Flora Medica

CANNABIS.CANNABIS.Flowers dioecious. $ . Flowers racemose. Calyx 5-parted,imbricated. Stamens 5 ; anthers large, pendulous. ?. Flowersin spikes.Bract acuminate, rolled round the ovary in the roomof a calyx. Ovary roundish ;with 1 pendulous ovule, and 2 longfiliform glandular stigmas. Achenium ovate, 1 -seeded ;embryodoubled up, with the radicle parallel with the plano-convexcotyledons and separated from them by a small quantity of albumen.618. C. sativa Linn. sp. pi. 1457. Willd. iv. 768. Woodv.t. 27. (Rumph. v. t. 77. Rheede x. t. 60 and 61.) Persia; hillsin the north of India ;whence it has been introduced into othercountries. (Hemp.)An annual, about 3 feet high, covered all over with an extremely finerough pubescence, which is hardly visible to the naked eye. Stemerect, branched, bright green, angular. Leaves alternate or opposite,on long weak petioles, digitate, scabrous, with linear-lanceolate sharplyserrated leaflets, tapering into a long smooth entire point ; stipulessubulate. Clusters of flowers axillary, with subulate bracts ;the maleslax and drooping, branched and leafless at the base, the females erect,simple and leafy at the base. $ . Calyx downy. $ . CalyK coveredwith short brownish glands. A very powerful stimulating narcotic,much used in some countries as an intoxicating drug. Under thenames of Banga, Bang, or Ganga in India, of Kinnab (the root of theword Cannabis) or Hashish in Arabia, Malach among the Turks,Dacha with the Hottentots, the dried leaves are universally employedeither mixed with Tobacco for smoking or in the form ofpowder which is swallowed in some fluid. The male flowers areemployed in a similar manner. In Nepal a narcotic gum resin calledCherris is supposed to be obtained from Hemp. The best of allcordage is manufactured from the tough woody tissue of the stems.Hemp seed is nutritious and not narcotic; it has the very singularproperty of changing the plumage of bullfinches and goldfinches fromred and yellow to black if they are fed on it for too long a time or intoo large a quantity. Burnett.MORUS.Flowers monoecious. $ spiked. Calyx 4-parted, spreading,membranous. Stamens 4, longer than the calyx, with the rudimentof an ovary between their bases. J clustered. Sepals 4,scale like, imbricating each other; 2 being opposite and externalto the other 2. Stigmas 2, linear, glandular; ovule solitary,suspended. Fruit consisting of the female flowers becomeand fleshygrown together, each enclosing a dry membranous pericarp.Seed pendulous;embryo curved like a horse shoe, amongstfleshy albumen, with the radicle directed to the hilum. Trees.299