428 



LATEX 



mountains in the neighbourhood of the town of Morocco, where the 

 drug is principally collected. 



The plant produces green, fleshy, quadrangular stems and branches 

 which bear small, scaly leaves supported by two persistent, thorny 

 stipules ; the flowers are small and borne on short peduncles ; the fruit 

 consists of three carpels, and resembles typical Euphorbiaceous fruits. 



Both the cortex and the pith of the plant contain long, branching, 

 laticiferous cells ; these when wounded discharge their latex in the 

 form of milky drops, the exudation in rainy seasons being very copious. 

 This dries to a resinous mass which is collected in the autumn by 



FIG. 236. Euphorbia resinfera. A, flowering branch, natural size. B and C, 

 staminate, D, pistillate flower, magnified. E, fruit, and F, seed, magnified. 

 (Luerssen, after Berg and Schmidt.) 



the poorer class of Arabs and brought to Morocco for sale. It is 

 exported chiefly from Mogadore. So acrid is the drug that the faces of 

 persons handling it have to be protected by cloths. 



Description. The drug occurs in dull yellow or brown pieces 

 seldom exceeding 1*5 cm. in width, often mixed with fragments 

 of the quadrangular, thorny stem and other debris. Many of the 

 pieces have evidently solidified round a pair of stipules and are pierced 

 by holes corresponding to them, or sometimes even include the stipules 

 themselves ; some are pierced with single holes and retain the fruits 

 or flowers or portions of them. The fruits are characterised by their 

 shape, each consisting of three nearly separate, one-celled, com- 

 pressed, keeled carpels attached at the apex and base to a central 

 axis. 



