THE BUCKTHORNS 27 



are collected in Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire, and 

 Oxfordshire for this purpose, and for the manufacture 

 of the purgative Syrup of Buckthorn. About fifty 

 years ago considerable quantities of a beautiful green 

 dye known as Lo-kao, or Chinese Green Indigo, were 

 imported from China to Lyons for dyeing silk. 

 It proved to be extracted from the bark of 

 R. tinctor'ius W. R. and R. dahu'ricus Pall., though 

 a similar dye has been obtained from our own 

 species R. catharticus, and both are now alike 

 superseded by the aniline colours. 



Whilst the English name is merely an early mis- 

 translation of the German Biixdom, the thorn-bearing 

 Box, the scientific name Rhamnus, or rather its Greek 

 equivalent Rhamnos, goes back to the very dawn of 

 the science, to Theophrastus and Dioscorides. It is a 

 nice question of philology to decide whether, as has 

 been alleged, this name has anything to do with the 

 Latin ramus, a branch, in reference to the much- 

 branched habit of most members of the group. 



Both our British species were growing in the garden 

 of the apothecary John Gerard in Fetter Lane, Holborn, 

 in 1596. In his " Herball," published in the following 

 year, he speaks of finding the Buckthorn " in Kent in 

 sundrio places " ; and of the Alder Buckthorn he writes, 

 " I found great plentie of it in a wood a mile from 

 Islington in the way from thence toward a small 

 village called Harnsey, at Hampstead, and in most 

 woods in the parts about London." Another London 

 apothecary, in the next generation, John Parkinson, 

 in his "Theatrum Botanicum," published in 1640, 

 classifies both species among purgative plants ; and 



