312 PHARMACEUTICAL BOTANY 



Inflorescences dioecious spikes, so on separate plants. Staminate 

 spikes forming deciduous catkins of yellowish flowers, pistillate 

 as persistent spikes of green flowers, at length maturing fruit. 



Flowers of catkins numerous, each of two to five (Willow) or 

 six to fifteen (Poplar) stamens in axil of a small bract leaf, sometimes 

 with small nectar knob or girdle at base; pollen abundant, hence 

 plants anemophilous, rarely entomophilous. Pistillate flowers 

 green, each of a bicarpellate pistil in axil of bract, ovary one-celled 

 with parietal placentation, style simple, stigma bilobed. 



Fruit a capsule dehiscing longitudinally. Seeds small, exal- 

 buminous, surrounded by a tuft of hairs for dissemination. 



Official drug Part used Botanical name Habitat 



Salicin Glucoside Several species of Europe, North 



Salix and Populus America 



{Populus nigra 

 Populus > North America\ 



balsamifera 

 Unofficial drug 

 Salix Bark Salix alba Europe 



III. Order Myricales. Myricacecz or Bayberry Family. Dice- 

 cious or sometimes monoecious, aromatic shrubs or trees with watery 

 juice and possessing underground branches which arch downward 

 then upward producing many suckers. Roots fibrous and bearing 

 many short rootlets upon which are frequently found coralloid 

 clusters of tubercles containing the Actinomyces Myricarum Young- 

 ken. Leaves alternate, revolute in vernation, serrate, irregularly 

 dentate, lobed or entire, rarely pinnatifid, pinnately and reticulately 

 veined, pellucid punctate, evergreen or deciduous, generally exstipu- 

 late, rarely stipulate. Flowers naked, unisexual, monoecious 

 or dioecious, in the axils of unisexual or androgynous aments from 

 scaly buds formed in the summer in the axils of the leaves of the 

 year, remaining covered during the winter and opening in March or 

 April before or with the unfolding of the leaves of the year. 



Staminate flowers in elongated catkins, each consisting of two to 

 eight stamens inserted on the torus- like base of the oval to oval- 

 lanceolate bracts of the catkin, usually subtended by two or fotir 

 or rarely by numerous bracteoles; filaments short or elongated, 



