IL—CRYPTOGAMOUS or FLOWERLESS PLANTS. 



'SaBCttiar Crgptogams. 



LYCOPODIACE^ 



SPOR^ LYCOPODII. 



Lycopodium; Semen vel Sporulw Lycopodii; F. Lycopode; 

 G. Bdrlappsamen, Eeocenmehl. 



Botanical Origin — Lycopodiurn davatum L. — This plant, the Com- 

 mon Clubmoss, is almost cosmopolitan. It is found on hilly pastures and 

 heaths throughout Central and Northern Europe from the Alps and 

 Pyrenees to the Arctic reunions, in the tnountains of the east and centre 

 of Spain, throughout Russian Asia to Amurland and Japan, in North 

 and South America, the Falkland Isles, Australia and the Cape of Good 

 Hope. It occurs throughout Great Britain, but is most plentiful on the 

 moors of the northern counties. 



The part of the plant employed in pharmacy is the minute spores, 

 which, as a yeUow powder, are shaken out of the kidney -shaped capsules 

 or sporangia, growing on the inner side of the bracts covering the 

 fruit-spike. 



The manner in which those sporse are able to reproduce the mother 

 plant is not yet satisfactorily ascertained.^ 



History — The Common Clubmoss was well known as Muscus ter- 

 restns or Muscv^s clavatus, to the older botanists, as Tragus, Dodonseus, 

 Tabemsemontanus, Bauhin, Parkinson and Ray, by most of whom its 

 supposed virtues as a herb have been commemorated. Though the 

 powder (spores) was officinal in Germany, and used as an application to 

 wounds in the middle of the 17th century,^ it does not appear to have 

 been known in the English shops until a comparatively recent period. 

 It is not included by Dale ^ in the list of drugs sold by London druggists 

 in 1692, nor enumerated in English drug lists of the last century; and 

 it never had a place in the London Pharmacopoeia. 



^ The few particulars may be found in the * Schroder, Pharmacopceia Medico-cky- 



excellent description of Lycopodium in mica, ed. 4, Lugd. 1656. 538. — Fluckiger, 



Luerssen's " Medicinisch-pharmcKeutische " Documente" (quoted p. 404) 63. 68. 



Botanik," i. (Leipzig, 1878) 635, with ^ Pharmacologia, Lond. 1693. 

 figures. 



