MEZEREON 459 



cells, the latter often becoming also papillose. The stomata usually 

 occur only upon the upper or ventral surface of the leaf and are 

 frequently enclosed in receptacles formed by the papillose elevations 

 of the neighboring cells. 



MEZEREUM. Mezereon Bark. The dried bark of Daphne 

 Mezereum, D. Gnidium and D. Laureola (Fam. Thymelseacese), 

 indigenous to Europe and Asia, and naturalized in New England 

 and Canada. The bark is collected in early spring; it is dried 

 and frequently made up into small bundles, the comiiiercial 

 supplies being obtained from Thuringia, southern France and 

 Algeria. 



Description. In flexible, double quills or somewhat flattened 

 strips, from 10 to 90 cm. in length, 3 to 20 mm. in breadth and from 

 0.3 to 1 mm. in thickness; outer surface yellowish- or olive-brown 

 (D. Mezereum) or purplish-brown (D. Gnidium) or purplish-gray 

 (D. Laureola), smooth, numerous lenticels, giving a transversely 

 striated appearance and occasionally with numerous circular brown- 

 ish-black apothecia; inner surface yellowish-white, satiny lustrous, 

 finely striate; fracture tough, fibrous, the inner bark lamellated; 

 outer corky layer easily separable from the middle bark, which varies 

 from light green to olive-brown, inner bark with small groups of 

 whitish bast fibers; odor very slight; taste at first like green bark, 

 becoming gradually pungent in the throat and extending to the rest 

 of the mouth with increasing effect. 



Inner Structure. Periderm consisting of a broad band of cork, 

 the outer cells being compressed and with yellowish-brown walls 

 and the inner more or less tabular with nearly colorless walls ; a hypo- 

 dermis of 3 to 5 rows of collenchymatous cells, containing chloro- 

 plastids or a yellowish-green resinous substance; an inner bark con- 

 sisting mostly of nearly colorless bast fibers occurring in loosely united 

 groups and with thin, non-lignified, colorless walls; medullary rays 

 few, uniseriate, and filled with somewhat spheroidal starch grains, 

 from 0.003 to 0.015 mm. in diameter. 



Powder. Light yellowish- or grayish-brown, sternutatory; bast 

 fibers, numerous from 0.400 to 3 mm. in length and about 0.015 mm. 

 wide, frequently more or less uneven or irregularly bent and con- 

 siderably attenuated at the ends the walls being from 0.001 to 0.005 

 mm. in thickness, colorless, non-lignified and free from pores; frag- 

 ments of yellowish-brown cork cells and cells of medullary' rays con- 

 taining starch; starch grains relatively few, mostly spheroidal or 

 ellipsoidal and varying from 0.003 to 0.015 mm. in diameter, occa- 

 sionally 2- to 4-compound. 



