On Aluminium in the Ashes of Flowering Plants. 



By 



Hikorokurö Yoshida. F. CS-, 



Assistant Professor of Chemistry, College of Science, 

 Imperial University. 



It has long been known that lycopodinm contains aluminium 

 (as acetate) dissolved in its juices, and quite recently the presence of 

 much alumina in the ash of another cryptogamous plant lias been 

 announced, though the evidence does not seem quite satisfactory. 

 But the occurrence of this element in the ashes of phanerogamous 

 plants has hitherto been attributed to particles of soil adliering to the 

 plants sul)mitted to calcination. Accordingly, in ash analyses, even 

 Avhen elaborate, no mention is found of its presence as a constituent 

 of the real ash, and A. H. Allen's statement, in his Commercial 

 Organic Analijsis, Vol. I. page 38, that "flowering plants do not 

 contain aluminium as a normal constituent," appears to express the 

 current opinion of chemists. 



There have been published, however, at least two exceptions to 

 the supposed non-occurrence of aluminium in phanerogamous plants, 

 one by myself {Journ. Chem. Soc. 43, 481), and the other quite 

 recently by M. L'Hôte (Comptes rendus 104, 853). In the aqueous 

 part of the latex of PJius vernicifera, the lacquer tree of Japan, 

 aluminium is present in solution, apparently as arabate, for on treat- 

 ing the latex with absolute alcohol, boiling the precipitate thus formed 

 with water, filtering and evaporating the aqueous extract, a residue 



