OCCURRENCE OF SAPONIN IN AUSTRALIAN 

 ACACIAS AND ALBIZZIAS. 



By JOSEPH LAUTERER, M.D. 



[Read before the Royal Soeietij of Queensland, October 10, 1896.] 



It is a well established fact that the physiology of plant 

 life cannot be thoroughly understood without a keen knowledge 

 of the chemical processes which take place in the living 

 vegetable tissues. Many instances corroborating this view have 

 been observed by the author of this paper in the course of his 

 chemical investigations of Australian plants. Chemistry alone 

 shows us the migration of certain substances from one organ of 

 the plant to another where it is needed, and the transformation 

 of one chemical body into another one by the vital power of the 

 living plant. 



One good instance of these migrations and transformations 

 is laid by me before the Royal Society to-day. This same paper 

 also proves that there exist many plants which have been 

 thought to be quite inert, though they are highly poisonous at 

 certain periods of their life. 



Who ever thought a wattle to be a poisonous plant ? Who 

 would not laugh at anybody calling an Albizzia a poisonous 

 tree ? And still it is beyond any doubt that our Brisbane 

 " black wattle," Acacia Cunninghamii — although quite 

 innocent when it blossoms and after it has borne fruit — contains 

 a large amount of saponin in the unripe pods, and a small 

 amount of it even in the leaves and in all green parts of the 

 plant. Saponin has been found in Acacias as far back as 1871. 

 The " Pharmaceutical Journal " of that year mentions Acacia 

 concinna, Phil., of Chili (not A. concinna, J).C) as a source of 

 commercial saponin, besides the other plants from which it is 

 generally drawn, such as Silene, DiantMis, Anagallis, Vaccaria, 



