PETIVERIACE^E. 



Nat. syst. ed. 2. p. 212. 



PETIVERIA. 



Sepals 4. Stamens 6-7-8. Styles 4, permanent, eventually 

 becoming spiny and reflexed. Fruit armed with spines at the 

 apex. 



752. P. alliacea Linn. sp. pi. 486. Act. holm. 1744. p. 287. t. 7. 

 Trew.Ehret. t. 67. Willd. sp.pl. ii. 284. Various parts of the 

 West Indies. (Guineahen weed.) 



A small bush with a powerful and disagreeable alliaceous odour. 

 Stem straight, erect, but little branched, deep green, striated, downy. 

 Leaves oblong, obovate, or oblong-lanceolate, obtuse, acute or acumi- 

 nate, scabrous at the edge; glandular near the petiole which is 

 both glandular and downy; stipules small, subulate, spiny. Spikes 

 2 or 3, long, naked, slender, terminal, drooping at the upper end. 

 Rachis angular. Flowers distant, white, placed close to the rachis ; 

 calyx 4-parted, with linear spreading segments, which afterwards become 

 erect, leafy, and cover over the fruit. All the parts are excessively 

 acrid ; a small portion of the leaves chewed is said by Burnett to 

 render the tongue as dry and black and rough as it appears in cases of 

 malignant fever. The negroes consider it a sudorific, and say that 

 vapour baths or fumigations of it will restore motion to paralysed 

 limbs. The roots are used in the West Indies as a remedy for tooth- 

 ach ; the negresses also employ it to procure abortion. Schomb. in 

 Linncea. ix. 511. 



752 a. P. tetrandra Gomez in act. Olyssip. 1812. p. 17. is em- 

 ployed in Brazil under the name of Raiz de Pipi in warm baths 

 and lotions as a remedy for defective contractibility of the 

 muscles, or in paralysis of the extremities arising from cold. 

 Martins. 



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