450 SOLANACEiE. 



SOLANACE^. 



STIPES DULCAMARiE. 



Caules DulcamarcB ; Bitter-sweet, Dulcamara, Woody NigJitshade ; 

 F. Douce amere, Morelle grimjyante ; G. Bittersilss. 



Botanical Origin — Solanwm Dulcamara L., a perennial shrubby 

 plant, having small pvirple flowers and red berries, occurring throughout 

 Europe, except in the extreme north. It is also found in Northern 

 Africa, and in Asia Minor, and has become naturalized in North America. 

 It is common in moist, shady hedges and thickets.^ 



History — Bitter nightshade, "manyglog," was an ingredient, 

 together with wild sage and betony, of a drink which the Welsh 

 " Physicians of Myddfai" in the' 1.3th century prepared for the bite of 

 a mad dog.- The stalks of bitter-sweet were also used in the medical 

 practice by the German physicians and botanists of the 16th century, 

 one of whom. Tragus (1552), has figured and described it, under the 

 name of Dulcis amara or Dulcamarum. 



Description — The older stems are woody; the upper and younger 

 are soft and green, long and straggling, attaining by the support of other 

 plants a height of 6 feet or more, and dying back in the winter. For 

 medicinal use, the shoots of a year or two old should be gathered, either 

 late in the year, or early in the spring before the leaves come out. 

 These shoots are several feet long, by about i of an inch thick, of a light 

 greenish-brown, sometimes cylindrical, at others indistinctly 4- or 5- 

 sided, slightly furrowed longitudinally, or somewhat warty. 



The thin, shining cork -bark easily exfoliates, showing beneath it the 

 mesophloeum which is rich in chlorophyll. The stalks are mostly 

 hollow, and partially filled with a whitish pith. The wood when dried 

 is about half or one-third as broad as the hollow centre, and the green 

 bark considerably narrower than the wood; the latter has a radiate 

 structure, and in older stems exhibits two or three sharply-defined 

 annual rings. The stems are usually cut into short lengths before being 

 dried for use. 



The odour, which is rather foetid and unpleasant, is to a great extent 

 dissipated by drying. The taste, at first slightly bitter, is afterwards 

 sweetish. The bitter appears to be more predominant in the spring 

 than in the autumn. 



Microscopic Structure — The epidermis of younger shoots consists 

 of tabular thick-walled cells, many of them being elevated from the 

 surface as short blunt hairs. The older stems are covered with the usual 

 suberous envelope. The boundary between the mesophloeum and the 

 endophloeum is marked by a ring of strong liber fibres, some of which 

 also occur in the pith. The woody part is rich in large vessels. In 

 the parenchymatous tissue of bitter-sweet, small crystals of oxalate of 



^ Solanum nigrum L. which slightly re- ^ Meddyijon Myddvai (see Ap]^endix) ISiS. 



sembles dulcamara, is a low-growing annual 293. 375. 

 or biennial, with herbaceous stems, and ber- 

 ries usually black. 



