CANNABIS. 



CANNABIS. 



Flowers dioecious. $ . Flowers racemose. Calyx 5-parted, 

 imbricated. Stamens 5 ; anthers large, pendulous. ? . Flowers 

 in spikes. Bract acuminate, rolled round the ovary in the room 

 of a calyx. Ovary roundish ; with 1 pendulous ovule, and 2 long 

 filiform glandular stigmas. Achenium ovate, 1 -seeded; embryo 

 doubled up, with the radicle parallel with the plano-convex 

 cotyledons and separated from them by a small quantity of al- 

 bumen. 



618. C. sativa Linn. sp. pi. 1457. Willd. iv. 768. Woodv. 

 t. 27. — (Bumph. v. t.77. Rheedex. t. 60 and 61.) — Persia; hills 

 in the north of India ; whence it has been introduced into other 

 countries. (Hemp.) 



An annual, about 3 feet high, covered all over with an extremely fine 

 rough pubescence, which is hardly visible to the naked eye. Stem 

 erect, branched, bright green, angular. Leaves alternate or opposite, 

 on long weak petioles, digitate, scabrous, with linear-lanceolate sharply 

 serrated leaflets, tapering into a long smooth entire point; stipules 

 subulate. Clusters of flowers axillary, with subulate bracts ; the males 

 lax and drooping, branched and leafless at the base, the females erect, 

 simple and leafy at the base. $ . Calyx downy. <j> . Calyx covered 

 with short brownish glands. — A very powerful stimulating narcotic, 

 much used in some countries as an intoxicating drug. Under the 

 names of Banga, Bang, or Ganga in India, of Kinnab (the root of the 

 word Cannabis) or Hashish in Arabia, Malach among the Turks, 

 Dacha with the Hottentots, the dried leaves are universally em- 

 ployed either mixed with Tobacco for smoking or in the form of 

 powder which is swallowed in some fluid. The male flowers are 

 employed in a similar manner. In Nepal a narcotic gum resin called 

 Cherris is supposed to be obtained from Hemp. The best of all 

 cordage is manufactured from the tough woody tissue of the stems. 

 Hemp seed is nutritious and not narcotic; it has the very singular 

 property of changing the plumage of bullfinches and goldfinches from 

 red and yellow to black if they are fed on it for too long a time or in 

 too large a quantity. Burnett. 



MORUS. 



Flowers monoecious. $ spiked. Calyx 4-parted, spreading, 

 membranous. Stamens 4, longer than the calyx, with the rudi- 

 ment of an ovary between their bases. ? clustered. Sepals 4, 

 scale like, imbricating each other; 2 being opposite and external 

 to the other 2. Stigmas 2, linear, glandular ; ovule solitary, 

 suspended. Fruit consisting of the female flowers become fleshy 

 and grown together, each enclosing a dry membranous pericarp. 

 Seed pendulous ; embryo curved like a horse shoe, amongst 

 fleshy albumen, with the radicle directed to the hilum. — Trees. 

 299 



