Flora Medica

POLYGOXACE-iE.stance rather coriaceous, their colour greyish, or glaucous. Stipulesmembranous, acute, often red, with a few remote brownish ribs.Flowers axillary, 2 or 3 together, on simple stalks, small, but oftensingularly beautiful under a magnifier, being variegated with white,crimson, and green. Stamens 8, rarely 10, short and broad. Ovarytriangular. Styles 3, short, with thick, blunt stigmas. Fruit acutelytriangular, of a shining black, the food of many small birds. Smith.Fruit said to be emetic and cathartic.750. P. barbatum Linn. sp. pi i. 518. Thumb, fl. cap. 385.Meisner polyg. p. 80. China, East Indies, Cape of Good Hope,and elsewhere.Stem herbaceous, rufous. Leaves lanceolate; stipules sheathing,lax, pilose, truncated, fringed with long bristly ciliae. Spikes long,virgate. Flowers hexandrous, trigynous, remote. Considered adiuretic at the Cape of Good Hope ; in India the infusion of its leavesis prescribed by native practitioners to alleviate the pain of severe colic.Burnett.751. P. amphibium Linn. sp. pi. 517. Eng. Bot. t. 435. Fl.Lond. t. 28. Eng. Fl. 232 ii. Common in ponds, ditches andwet places.Stems creeping, root-like, with numerous whorls of red or whitefibres ; round, branching in the lower part, leafy. Leaves stalked,generally floating, ovate-lanceolate, more or less acute, single ribbed,minutely serrated, smooth, bright green, slightly heartshaped at thebase. Stipule sheathing, abrupt, wavy, smooth. Flowers crimson, indense, ovate, stalked, bracteated heads. Stamens 5. Styles 2, unitedat base ; stigmas globular, red. Fruit ovate, compressed, with 2obtuse edges. The root-like stems of this Polygonum bear someresemblance to sarsaparilla, and according to Coste and Willemet, theyare substituted for the foreign drug by the herbalists of Nancy ;theseauthors also report, that it resembles true sarsaparillain its properties,and that the apothecaries^and druggists of Lorraine use it in preference.Burnett.362