176 PLANT ORGANS OR PARTS OF PLANTS. 



Chemistry. — Distilled with water, the bark yields hy- 

 drocyanic acid and a volatile oil similar to that of bitter 

 almonds. A bitter glycoside, amygdalin, crystallizing in 

 colorless needles, is the source. It is soluble in warm 

 water with a blue fluorescence intensified by alkalies and 

 destroyed by acids. 



CORTEX SASSAFRAS. SASSAFRAS BARK. 



From bark of root of Sassafras variijolia, Sassafras 

 officinale, U. S., from Canada to Florida, west to Missouri. 

 Tree. Shrub. 



Irregular fragments, deprived of gray corky layer; 

 bright rust brown, soft, fragile, with short corky fracture. 

 Inner surface smooth, strongly fragrant; taste sweetish, 

 aromatic, somewhat astringent. 



Histology. — The bark shows on section an outer, thin and 

 compact, brownish layer; an inner loose, brownish, par- 

 enchymatic layer, with perhaps a radial appearance in 

 the inner bark. 



The outer bark is made up of from five to fifteen 

 rows of regular, oblong, right-angled cork cells. Be- 

 neath this there may be at times a portion of the 

 primary bark. This consists of thin- walled parenchy- 

 matic cells, large, generally rich in starchy contents. 



Scattered here and there in the parenchyma are 

 several large oil cells which contain the active sassafras 

 oil. Crystal cells and crystals are absent. The inner 

 bark is composed in the main of thin parenchymatic 

 cells with a few medullary rays. The medullary rays 

 are generally two cells wide and the cells are more or less 

 quadrangular and possessed of large simple pores. Here 

 and there are a few bast fibres in the outer edge of the 

 secondary bark; these are small in cross-section. 



Between the medullary rays lying in the inner side of 

 the inner bark there may be found a few thin-walled cam- 

 biform cells and perhaps some few sieve tubes. The sieve 



