THE BUCKTHORNS 27 
are collected in Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire, and 
Oxfordshire for this purpose, and for the manufacture 
of the purgative Syrup of Buckthorn. About fifty 
years ago considerable quantities of a beautiful green 
dye known as Lo-kao, or Chinese Green. Indigo, were 
imported from China to Lyons for dyeing silk. 
It proved to be extracted from the bark of 
R. tinctorius W.R. and R. dahw’ricus Pall. though 
a similar dye has been obtained from our own 
species R. catharticus, and both are now alike 
superseded by the aniline colours. 
Whilst the English name is merely an early mis- 
translation of the German Buadorn, the thorn-bearing 
Box, the scientific name Rhammnus, or rather its Greek 
equivalent Rhamnos, goes back to the very dawn of 
the science, to Theophrastus and Dioscorides. It is a 
nice question of philology to decide whether, as has 
been alleged, this name has anything to do with the 
Latin ramus, a branch, in reference to the much- 
branched habit of most members of the group. 
Both our British species were growing in the garden 
of the apothecary John Gerard in Fetter Lane, Holborn, 
in 1596. In his“ Herball,” published in the following 
year, he speaks of finding the Buckthorn “in Kent in 
sundrie places”; and of the Alder Buckthorn he writes, 
“T found great plentie of it in a wood a mile from 
Islington in the way from thence toward a small 
village called Harnsey, at Hampstead, and in most. 
woods in the parts about London.” Another London 
apothecary, in the next generation, John Parkinson, 
in his “Theatrum Botanicum,” published in 1640, 
classifies both species among purgative plants; and 
