CANNABIS SATIVA, Unn, 



[Vide Plates XIX and XX]. 



English, hemp; Veenaculae, bhang. 



Natural order Urticacece, tribe Cannahinece. A coarse tall annual with palmately divided leaves 

 and small green dioecious flowers. Stems 3-10 ft. high, often woody at the base, closely and 

 finely tomentose ; branches slender. Leaves alternate or opposite, on slender grooved petioles, 

 with linear acute stipules at the base, leaflets 5-7, of the upper leaves fewer, linear, lanceolate, taper- 

 ing at each end, deeply serrate, dark green above, pale and mealy beneath ; midrib and veins 

 prominent. Flowers unisexual, small, greenish. Male flowers many, terminal and in axillary 

 drooping panicles ; perianth segments 5, almost free, spreading or recurved, boat-shaped, downy, 

 acute, margins hyaline ; stamens 5, opposite the perianth segments, filaments very slender. Female 

 flowers fewer, axillary, sessile, erect, bracteate ; perianth a single entire leaf, opening at the side, 

 and enclosing the ovary, 5-veined, glandular ; ovary ovoid, smooth, containing a single pendulous 

 ovule ; style short ; stigmas 2, long, exserted ; fruit small, enclosed in the persistent perianth, 

 smooth, brownish-grey ; seed completely filling the pericarp ; embryo curved. 



Although the hemp plant is not uncommon in gardens in all parts of the Pro- 

 vinces, its systematic cultivation is restricted to the Himalayas and the helt of country 

 lying immediately heneath them. It is grown in most parts not for its familiar virtues 

 as a fibre producer, but on account of the intoxicating nature of a resinous juice which 

 exudes from, or resides in, its stalks, leaves and flowers, and which constitutes under 

 many forms and preparations one of the most popular and most characteristic narcotics 

 of the East. 



The virtues of the hemp plant appear to vary very greatly with the locality of 

 its growth. Although it is a common jungle plant along the Himalayan Tarai, no 

 use whatever is made of its fibre, and its cultivation as a fibre plant is restricted to the 

 inner vallies of the Himalaya. There is also a striking difi'erence in the nature of its 

 narcotic product under different circumstances. On the dry plateau of Central Asia 

 a gummy exudation appears on the flowers and leaves, which when rubbed or scraped 

 off forms the drug known as charas. This exudation is also gathered from the hemp 

 plant grown in the Himalaya in the locality where its fibre is found to repay extraction. 

 In the plains of India the plant will not produce charas, and in order to obtain its 

 intoxicating secretion, it is necessary to gather the parts of the plant which contain it; 

 when these are the immature female flowers and floral envelopes the product is known 

 as ffdtija, when they are the leaves it is the bhang, sahzi, or siddhi, a decoction of which 

 takes the place of alcohol with a large portion of the Hindu population. On the other 

 hand it is said that gdnja is not yielded by the plant when grown in the Himalaya, and 

 although its leaves are used as bhang, they are reported to be of most inferior quality. 



The plant is grown in the Himalaya on elevations between 3,000 and 7,000 feet, 

 forming as a rule small patches at the corner of villages, which the daily offices of the 

 inhabitants provide with a plentiful supply of manure. It is notorious that hemp 

 requires great richness of soil, and there is a proverb in Italy (where the finest hemp 



* References -.—Linn. Sp. Pi. Ed. I. p. 1027 ; Roxb. n. Ind. iii. 772 ; Bentley and Trimen Med. PI. 231 ; Powell 

 Punj. Prod. 292. C. indica, Lam. ; Drury Useful PL of Ind. 106. 



