SEDUM ACRE. ORD. XXX. Succulente. 549° 
of the corolla; and furnished with yellow anther. Germen 
oblong, yellow, terminating in five styles, furnished with simple 
stigmata. Capsules five, pointed, containing minute oval brown- 
ish seeds.’ | 
This is a common British plant, growing on houses, walls, and 
gravelly banks, Like many other plants of this natural order it 
receives its nourishment principally from the air, in proof of 
which it continues to grow when detached from the ground, and 
suspended by the root. 
It resembles the Sedum sexangulare very, much, so that some 
botanists have considered the latter as only a variety of the former. 
The difference however is sufficiently specific both in a botanical 
and medical sense ;* the latter being devoid of the pungent biting 
taste which characterizes the plant here figured. 
_ This species of Sedum, in its recent state, is extremely crn. 
like the Hydropiper; ; hence, if taken in large doses, it acts 
powerfully on the prima.viz, proving both emetic and cathartic; 
applied to the skin, as a cataplasm, it frequently produces vesica- 
tions and erosions. Boerhaave therefore imagined that its internal 
employment must : he unsafe; but experience has discovered that 
a decoction of this plant is not only safe, but. of great efficacy i 
scorbutic complaints; for which purpose a handful of the herb is 
directed by Below to be boiled in eight pints of beer till they 
are reduced to four, of which three or four ounces are to be taken 
every, or every other, morning. Milk has been found to answer 
this purpose better than beer.‘—Not only ulcers simply scorbutic, 
but those of a scrophulous and even cancerous tendency, have 
been cured by the use of this plant, of which Marquet relates 
* Mr. Curtis has remarked, that “ the leayes of S. Acre are short, broad at the 
base, and at a considerable distance asunder, while those of the Sexangulare are 
nearly of the same ‘thickness throughout, ed more numerous, and pistes = 
six rows or angles.” 
» A Swedish Phy. sician, Vi Misc. Nat. Cur. Dec. 1. "Aan. 6. Ops. 22. p. 49. 
© ‘Lange. Read. Bruns. Domest. p.121. — 4° Mem. sur Dillecebru. &c. 
No, 46.—vot. 4, 6z 
