338 



TAMARIND. TAMARINDUS 



Natural order, Lomentacea. A genus of the Monadelphia 

 Triandria class, and not of the- Triandria Monogynia, as 

 classed by Linnaus. 



" Lay me reclined 



Beneath the spreading tamarind that shakes, 

 Fanned by the breeze, its fever-cooling fruit." 



THIS name is derived from Tamar, the Arabic name for 

 the date ; and it is to the Arabians that we owe a know- 

 ledge of the use of this fruit in medicine. The ancient 

 Greeks knew nothing of it, and the first authors who 

 prescribe the tamarind are Serapion, Mesue, and Avi- 

 cenna. 



The tamarind-tree is a native of both Indies, and 

 thrives also in Egypt, Palestine, Arabia, and other parts 

 of Asia; and it appears, by Johnson's edition of Gerard, 

 to have been cultivated in England previously to 1633. 

 Miller states, that he has had it grow upwards of three 

 feet high in one summer, and produce flowers the same 

 year it was sown ; but this must have been accidental, 

 for none of his older plants blossomed, although he had 

 them twelve feet high, and eighteen years old. There is 

 a fine healthy tree of this species now in the Royal Bo- 

 tanic Gardens at Kew, which .flowered a few years back 

 for the first time. 



The tree grows to a great size, with large spreading 

 branches, and a thick and beautiful foliage. The leaves 

 are pinnate, composed of sixteen or eighteen pairs of 



