510 NATURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS. 



The organs of vegetation have been the object of numerous re- 

 searches.^ These plants, of a white, yellow, red, or brown colour, 

 are generally of a fleshy consistence, and their tissues are often filled 

 with a waxlike substance,^ starch,^ or an astringent juice which gives 

 them certain therapeutic properties.* They are perennial or more 

 rarely monocarpous. The subterranean stem or rhizome is tuberous, 

 simple or lobed, sometimes cylindrical or branched; it fixes itself 

 directly to the roots of the foster plant, penetrates its substance, and 

 attaches itself to its tissues in various ways,^ without, however, 

 uniting with them by true suckers (?). It is parenchymatous and 

 traversed in diff'erent directions^ by vascular bundles, forming a system 

 sometimes very ramified and complicated. The surface of the rhi- 

 zome, in Balaiiophora, bears papillae consisting of simple or divided 

 masses of cellular tissue, traversed by a passage; they are very 

 numerous and in form of a crois in B. dioica, and are supposed to 

 be intimately connected with ihe respiration of the plant."^ The 

 true stomata have not been observed ; there are rarely hairs, which 

 exist however in certain Langsdorffia and on the Auriferous axes of 

 Thonningia. Weddell describes the fibre- vascular bundles of the 



1 Tratt. Zinn(ea,m. 194. — Unger, Ann. Wien. according to the mode of insertion on the foster 

 Mus. ii. 38. — GcEPP. Nov. Acta Acad. Nat. Cur. plant, in three groups : those in which the 

 xviii. Suppl. i. 229; xxii. 117. — Vq-leck, ibid. vascular fascicles of the foster root terminate 

 xxii. 161. — Griff. Trans. Linn. Soc. xx. 96. — definitely in the tissue of the parasite at some 

 Wedd. Mem. sur le Cynotnorium (see p. 503, note distance from the point of insertion ; the vas- 

 3). — Hook. f. Tians. Linn. Soc. xxii. 2, t. 3, 4, cular systems of the two plants being in no part 

 6, 8. — Chat. Anat. t. 93, 95, 99, 105 (part). — in immediate affinity; those in which the con- 

 SoLMS, Priiigsh. Jahrb. vi. 529. nexion between parasite and nurse is solely by 



2 J. Hooker indicated the wax cellules in the intervention of a cellular tissue ; those in 

 Balanophora {Trans. Linn. Soc. xxii. t. 4), and which the fascicles of the foster root are con- 

 EiCHLER {Mart. Fl. Bras. Balanoph. t. 2) in tinned with those of the rhizome. Weddell 

 Langsdorffia. This substance exists also in has pointed out that the two latter modes of 

 Thonningia. It has been called balanophorium insertion are united in Cynomorium. He de- 

 and balanophorine. It renders L. hypogcea so scribes, in the latter, radical suckers and tuber- 

 combustible that tapers are made of it at Bogota, cular suckers. The former have only a central 

 and torches in many parts of Columbia. vascular fascicle ; the latter correspond to grafts 



^ In Cynomorium, Sarcophyte, Mystropetalon. on the largest roots. " Nothing more variable 



* Cynomorium coccineum yields by pressure a than the disposition of the tissues in these 



reddish, bitter, and styptic juice described by grafts." 



BoccoNE as astringent in cases of sores, con- ^ The disposition of these fascicles becomes 



fusions, haemorrhage, dysentery, etc. The more regular in the cylindrical rhizomes. 

 Knights of Malta are said to have prepared ' Junghuhn says (i\'ou. Acta xviii. Suppl. 



from it a powerful remedy for wounds received 223), and the observation has been constantly 



in battle. A dental opiate has been prepared repeated, that B. glabra does not bear these 



from it, and an astringent decoction said to be papillae except in cases where it springs from 



successfully prescribed for certain ulcers. the same root as B. elongata. 

 ^ J. Hooker has classed the BalanophorccRy 



