SWEET BAY. 63 



coloured burk. Its leaves are very numerous, evergreen, lance- 

 shaped, rather over three inches long, but varying in size, on short 

 channelled petioles, alternate, without stipules, pointed, smooth, 

 strongly veined beneath, entire, of firm texture, deep green colour, 

 and covered with small immersed glands. The leaves of L. nobilis 

 are always undulate and may at once be distinguished at sight by 

 this character from the " garden laurel," also from the fact of its 

 leaves being entire, and not serrate. The difference in odour when 

 bruised is also at once apparent. 



It is noticed, however, that the undulation, or crisping at tlie 

 edges of the leaves varies a good deal. The width of the leaves 

 also varies. Meissner * distinguishes five varieties on these 

 characters. The flowers are male and female on different plants, 

 small, yellowish in colour, and arranged in small umbellate, stalked 

 clusters of usually five, surrounded by an involucre of blunt, 

 concave, reddish bracts, which enclose the umbel when in bud ; 

 the peduncles are short, stout, curved, and in pairs coming off 

 opposite one another at the axils of the leaves. The corolla in 

 both male and female flowers is divided into four oval, concave 

 segments, which stand erect and are of an herbaceous or yellowish 

 white colour. The filaments are as long as the calyx ; the four 

 outer ones simple, the rest compound, bearing two lateral glands 

 or abortive anthers. The true anthers are yellow, ovate, composed 

 of two valves, diverging from the stamens, or gaping at the base. 

 The style of the female flowers is very short, and the germen 

 becomes an oval drupe, scarcely f of an inch long, which is fleshy, 

 very smooth, of a dark purple, almost black colour, and containing 

 a large nut of similar shape. Dr. Landerer says, that in Greece 

 the fruit resembles that of the olive, and is known by the name of 

 Daphnekoukou, after the name of the tree Adcjivrj. 



The dried berries are sometimes imported from the south of 

 Europe. In this state they appear of a blackish-brown colour, 

 with a thin, brittle, wrinkled pericarp, to which the single seed is 

 not attached. When shaken near the ear they are heard to rattle, 

 a character which at once distinguishes them from " Cocculus 

 Indicus " berries, which resemble them in appearance and have 

 sometimes been mistaken for them ; the seed of Cocculus Indicus 

 is not loose in the pericarp, and cannot rattle. The seed of the 



* In DC. Prodr. xv., pt. I, pp. 233-240. 



