THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 15 



The so-called Florida cranljerries look like large red 

 flower buds. The whole outer part is used, the inner green 

 seed pod not being edible. The plant resembles a cotton 

 plant and the dark-red cone-shaped fruits grow in the axils 

 of the leaves. The scientific name of the plant is Hibiscus 

 sabdarijfa. 



THE MONEY IN DRUG PLANTS 



By Willard N. C1.UTE. 



IT seems to be the general impression, that collecting and 

 cultivating drug plants for market, offers a short cut to 

 fortune and a variety of circumstances serves to deepen this 

 impression. The price of ginseng has long lingered in the 

 vicinity of the eight dollar level, heroes of popular fiction 

 find they have the touch that will transform common plants 

 into gold and the dispensor of drugs helps the idea along by 

 charges ciuite in keeping with the popular understanding. 



It is possible, however, that some of these values are 

 fictitious. The ginseng craze of some years ago, like the tulip 

 craze in Holland and the mulberry craze in the early days of 

 our own country, finally passed without developing any great 

 number of millionaires. The virtues of ginseng lie, not in 

 the diseases it will cure, but in the diseases the Chinese be- 

 lieve it will cure and so, like good Americans, we encourage 

 the delusion so long as it is a paying one. Nor can we form 

 a proper estimate of the value of drugs by the prices charged 

 when the pharmacist sells them back to us. In his charges, 

 the drug dispensor includes a fee for knowing what to use 

 and another for knowing how to decipher those interesting 

 hieroglyphics that invariably follow a capital R with a pin 

 through its tail. It may be well, therefore, to spend a few 



