American Medical Botany; Being a Collection of the Native Medicinal Plants of the United States, Containing Their Botanical History and Chemical Analysis, and Properties and Uses in Medicine, Diet and the Arts, with Volume 3, PT. 1 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1820 edition. Excerpt: ... The genus Myrica belongs to the class Dioecia and order Tetrandria. It is also ranked among the Jlmentacece of Linnaeus and Jussieu. The generic character consists in an imbricated ament; the scales without a corolla; the barren flowers containing four anthers, the fertile ones two styles. Fruit, one seeded, --The specific character, as given by Michaux, is as follows. Leaves wedge-lanceolate, with a few serratures at top; barren aments lax; fruit spherical, naked, distinct. The Wax myrtle is found bearing fruit at every size, from the height of one foot, to six or eight. In Louisiana, it is said to grow to twelve feet. The top is much branched, and covered with a grayish bark. The leaves are wedgelanceolate, varying in width, sometimes entire, but more frequently toothed, particularly toward the end. They are somewhat pubescent, a little paler beneath, and generally twisted, or revolute in their mode of growth. They are inserted in a scattered manner by short petioles. The flowers appear in May before the leaves are fully expanded. The barren ones grow in catkins, which are sessile, erect, about half an inch or three quarters long; originating from the sides of the last year's twigs. Every flower is formed by a concave rhomboidal scale, containing three or four pairs of roundish anthers on a branched footstalk. The fertile flowers, which grow on a different shrub, are less than half the size of the barren ones, and consist of narrower scales, with each an ovate germ, and two filiform stvles. To these amenta succeed clusters or aggregations of small globular fruits resembling berries, which are at first green, but finally become nearly white. They consist of a hard stone inclosing a dicotyledonous kernel. This stone is studded on its outside with...