N. ORD.—EUPHORBIACE. 431 
GENUS.—STILLINGIA )* GARDEN. 
SEX. SYST._MONCECIA MONADELPHIA. 
STILLINGIA. 
QUEENS DELIGHT. 
SYN.—STILLINGIA SYLVATICA, LINN.; SAPIUM SYLVATICUM, TORREY. 
COM. NAMES.—QUEEN’S DELIGHT, YAW-ROOT, MARCORY, COCKUP- 
HAT, QUEEN’S ROOT; (FR., GER.) STILLINGIE. 
A TINCTURE OF THE ROOT OF STILLINGIA SYLVATICA, LINN. 
Description.—This herbaceous perennial grows to a height of from 1 to 3 
feet. Stems clustered, glabrous, upright, and umbellately branched ; juzce milky ; 
root cylindraceous, thick and ligneous, extensively creeping. Leaves alternate, 
crowded, almost sessile, varying in form, from ovate and obovate, to oblong and 
lanceolate, all thick and fleshy, and acute at the tip; #avg7 crenate-serrulate, with 
a gland in each serrature; s¢zpu/es minute, setaceous. /nflorescence a dense, ter- 
minal, moncecious spike; flowers destitute of petals or disk-glands. Sterile flowers 
in dense clusters of 5 to 10, arranged about the spike for nearly its whole extent, 
each cluster in the axil of a deltoid, scarious-margined, acute bract, and laterally 
enclosed by two peculiar scutellate glands attached to the rachis by their centres ; 
calyx cup-shaped, membranaceous, with a 2-cleft margin, the divisions imbricated 
in the bud; séamens 2, greatly exserted; //aments filiform, attached for nearly 
half their length below; anthers erect, 2-lobed, adnate and extrorse. Fertile flowers 
few, situated at the base of the spike in the axils of bracts similar to those of the 
sterile flowers; calyx 3-lobed; sty/e thick, articulated below, ségmas 3, simple, 
diverging. Fruit a roundish, roughish capsule, composed of 3 t-celled, 1-seeded, 
2-valved, carpels; seeds globose, roughish, carunculate. 
History and Habitat.—Stillingia is indigenous to the United States, where it 
grows in light, sandy and dry soil, from East Virginia southward to Florida, and 
westward to Louisiana and Texas, flowering from April to September. 
For many years before its introduction in medicine, by Dr. T. Y. Symons,+ as 
an alterative in syphilis, it had been used in the South, by the laity, as an emetic, 
cathartic, and alterative ; indeed it was and is still considered, in Southern States, 
an absolute specific in syphilis, entirely superseding the use of mercury. It was 
also used as an expectorant in pulmonary disorders; a purgative in hepatic trou-— 
bles; an alterative in scrofulosis; and was said to greatly add to the usefulness of | 
sarsaparilla. Dr. Porcher says: : : This plant exudes a seeecd juice, mee pak Sie ae 
* In honor of ssc Stillingfleet, M.D. tam Med. Rec 1828, ee t Resource Southern Field and Forest, ca ee 
