Flora Medica

PETIVERIACE^:.Nat.syst. ed. 2. p. 212.PETIVERIA.Sepals 4. Stamens 6-7-8. Styles 4?, permanent, eventuallybecoming spiny and reflexed. Fruit armed with spines at theapex.752. P. alliacea Linn. sp. pi. 486. Act. holm. 1744. p. 287. t. 7.Trew.Ehret. t 67. Willd. sp.pl.ii. 284. Various parts of theWest Indies. (Guineahen weed.)A small bush with a powerful and disagreeable alliaceous odour.Stem straight, erect, but little branched, deep green, striated, downy.Leaves oblong, obovate, or oblong-lanceolate, obtuse, acute or acuminate,scabrous at the edge ; glandular near the petiole which isboth glandular and downy; stipules small, subulate, spiny. Spikes2 or 3, long, naked, slender, terminal, drooping at the upper end.Rachis angular. Flowers distant, white, placed close to the rachis ;calyx 4-parted, with linear spreading segments, which afterwards becomeerect, leafy, and cover over the fruit. All the parts are excessivelyacrid ;a small portion of the leaves chewed is said by Burnett torender the tongue as dry and black and rough as it appears in cases ofmalignant fever. The negroes consider it a sudorific, and say thatvapour baths or fumigations of it will restore motion to paralysedlimbs. The roots are used in the West Indies as a remedy for toothach; the negresses also employ it to procure abortion. Schomb. inLiniKea. ix. 511.752 a. P. tetrandra Gomez in act. Olyssip. 1812. p. 17. is employedin Brazil under the name of Raiz de Pipi in warm bathsand lotions as a remedy for defective contractibility of themuscles, or in paralysis of the extremities arising from cold.Martius.