CINCHONACE.&. 



COUTAREA. 



Tube of calyx turbinate ; limbG-parted. Corolla funnel-shaped, 

 with a short tube, and a bluntly 6-lobed ventricose limb. Sta- 

 mens inserted in the bottom of the throat ; anthers linear, ex- 

 serted. Capsule coriaceous, obovate, compressed ; valves bifid 

 at the apex. Placentae fungous, eventually nearly free. Wings 

 of seeds membranous. American trees. Leaves ovate. Flowers 

 large showy. 



828. C. speciosa Aubl. guian. i. 314. t. 122. DC. prodr. 

 iv. 350. Portlandia hexandra Jacq. amer. 63. t. 182. f. 20. 

 Swartz. fl. ind. occ. i. 385. Guayana, Cayenne, Trinidad, 

 Spanish Main. 



An upright shrub, about 6 feet high according to Jacquin ; some- 

 times 25 feet high with a trunk a foot in diameter, according to Aublet. 

 Leaves ovate, entire, bluntly acuminate, veiny, smooth, stalked, opposite, 

 about 5 inches long. Peduncles 3-flowered. Flowers sweet-scented, 

 numerous, showy, pink outside, white and striped inside (purplish- 

 violet Aublet). Tube of the corolla very long, globose at the base : limb 

 6-parted, with ovate, flat, spreading segments 3 times shorter than the 

 tube. The Bark of French Guayana is said to be procured from this 

 shrub ; its properties are similar to those of Cinchona; but neither 

 Aublet nor Jacquin mention this. 



CINCHONA. 



Calyx 5-toothed. Corolla hypocrateriform, with a 5-parted 

 limb, valvate in aestivation. Anthers linear, inserted within the 

 tube, and not projecting, unless in a very slight degree. Cap- 

 sule splitting through the dissepiment into 2 cocci open at the 

 commissure, and crowned by the calyx. Seeds girted by a 

 membranous lacerated wing. 



* # * This is probably the most important genus in the whole of 

 Botanical Materia Medica, as it has certainly been the source of more 

 disputing, confusion, misapprehension and misrepresentation than any 

 other medico-botanical question. The bark furnished by different 

 species is so exceedingly dissimilar in quality, and the consumption of 

 it is so enormous, that it has become a point of the greatest importance 

 to ascertain whence the finest qualities are to be procured, and how to 

 avoid the inconvenience sustained by importations of a bad article. 

 Many a merchant has sustained heavy losses by adopting the errors of 

 those who have written on the subject. It is asserted by one class of 

 writers that the barks of New Grenada, exported from Carthagena are 

 the same as those of Peru which reach Europe by way of Lima ; others 

 declare that the Carthagena barks are entirely different from those of 

 Lima, and comparatively worthless. On the one hand we have the 

 College of Physicians in the new edition of their Pharmacopoeia as- 

 cribing the yellow, pale and red barks of the shops to the species 

 described under the names of C. cordifolia, lancifolia and oblongifolia 

 in Mr. Lambert's Illustration of the genus ; on the other we have such 

 eminent pharmacologists as Pereira, Guibourt, and Wood and Bache 



406 



