504 



BOTANY 



Officinal. — The dried, unripe fruit of Piper Cubeba, a climbing shrub of the 

 Sunda Islands, is the officinal Cubeba. It is distinguishable from pepper-corns by 

 the presence of a stalk-like appendage (Fig. 454). 



Family Polygonaeeae. — Flowers with single or double perigone, 

 typically trimerous, but the number of stamens is frequently increased 

 by division ; fruit almost always a nut ; seeds without perisperm. 



Fig. 453. — Piper nigrum. 1, Part of shoot 

 with young infructescences ; 2, tip of fruit- 

 spike. (After Wossidlo.) 



Fig. 454. — Piper Cubeba. a, Infructescence ; b, a 

 male flower ; c, a female flower in longitudinal 

 section ; rf, fruit in longitudinal section. — Offi- 

 cinal. (After Berg and Schmidt, a, Nat. size ; 

 b, e, d, magnified.) 



Herbs, rarely woody plants, especially characterised by alternate leaves 

 and connate stipules in the form of tubular sheaths. 



The wild or cultivated Polygonaceae are herbs with hollow stems 

 and simple, rarely lobed, alternate leaves. 



The ochrea, formed by the coherent stipules, is very character- 

 istic ; it first encloses the apex of the shoot, and afterwards surrounds 

 the base of the internode and axillary bud as a scaly tube. The flowers 

 are small and aggregated into compound spikes, racemes, or panicles ; 

 they have a calycoid or corollaceous, reddish perigone, according as 

 they are anemophilous or entomophilous. The inner circle of stamens 

 is often suppressed (Eumex). The fruit is in most cases a three-sided, 

 thin- walled nut with a mealy endosperm. 



Polygonum, Knot-Grass, has a corollaceous, five-leaved perigone and five to eight 

 stamens. Eumex, the Dock or Sorrel, possesses a six-leaved (3 + 3) calycoid perigone 



