JUNIPERUS SABINA. 
191 
1562,* and now forms an ornamenlal shrub in most of our gardens 
and shrubberies, flowering in May and June. This plant rises to the 
height of three or four feet, and sends off many branches, which are 
divided into numerous subdivisions. The stem and older branches 
are covered with a reddish l)rown bark, but the younger branches 
are wholly invested by the leaves; the leaves are very numerous, small, 
erect, firm, opposite, of a bright green colour, lie over one another, 
and terminate the branches in sharp points. The male and female 
flowers are on diff"erent plants : the male flowers stand in a conical 
catkin, which consists of a common spike-stalk, in which three op- 
posite flowers are placed in a triple row, and a tenth flower at the 
end ; at the base of each flower is a broad short scale, fixed laterally 
to a columnar pedicle; there is no corolla ; the filaments, which are 
three, are in the terminal flowers only, they are tapering, united at 
the base, and support simple anthers, which, in the lateral flowers, 
stand sessile ; the calyx of tlie female flowers is composed of three 
permanent scales, growing to the germen; the petals are three, stiflP, 
sharp, and permanent; the germen supports three styles, supplied 
with simple stigmata; the fruit is a roundish fleshy berry, of a blackish 
purple colour when ripe, marked with tubercles, (which are the ves- 
tiges of the petals and calyx) containing three small, hard, irregular 
shaped seeds. 
Sensible Qualities, &c. The leaves and tops of savine are of 
a strong (and to most people) disagreeable odour, and a hot, bitter, 
acrid taste : these qualities chiefly depend upon an essential oil, 
which is obtained in considerable quantity by distillation with water. 
Both water and alcohol extract the active principles of savine, but 
the latter more perfectly than the former. Decoctions of the leaves, 
freed from the volatile principle, by inspissation to the consistence 
of an extract, retain a considerable share of their pungency and 
warmth along with their bitterness, and have some degree of smell, 
but not resembling that of the plant itself. On inspissating the 
spirituous tincture, there remains an extract, consisting of two dis- 
tinct substances, of which one is yellow, unctuous or oily, bitterish, 
and very pungent ; the other black, resinous, tenacious, less pungent, 
and subastringcnt.f The odour of the essential oil is more powerful 
than the plant, and its taste very hot and acrid. Hoflfmann obtained 
five ounces of this oil from thirty-two ounces of the herb. 
* Alton's Hort. Kew. 
Lewis's Mat. Med. 
