COCHLEARIA OFFICINALIS. 
227 
vated for use in the gardens near London, where it differs in no 
respect from the plants which grow in their native soil. It flowers 
in April and May. 
The root is perennial, fibrous, and usually produces several 
upright, branching, angular stems, rising from six inches to a foot 
in height; the radical leaves are heart or kidney-shaped, hollowed 
like a spoon, fleshy, succulent, and standing upon long footstalks ; 
the stem leaves are alternate, rhomboidal, blunt, and dentated on 
each side : towards the top the leaves are sessile, or embracing the 
Stem, but towards the bottom they frequently stand upon short, 
broad footstalks ; the calyx consists of four leaflets, which are oval, 
blunt, concave, gaping, deciduous, and whitish at the margins; the 
flowers are cruciform, and stand upon short peduncles in thick 
clusters, which terminate the branches ; the petals are four, white, 
oval, spreading, and twice the length of the calyx ; the filaments, 
four long and two short, are greenish, tapering, and crowned with 
yellow anthers ; it has no style, and the germen becomes a small 
roundish, compressed pod, having two cells, divided by a thin parti- 
tion, in each of which are lodged four or five roundish, rough 
seeds. 
Sensible Properties. This plant has an unpleasant smell, 
and a warm, acrid, bitter taste ; its active principle yields by 
maceration to both watery and spirituous menstrua, and appears 
to be of a very volatile nature, the peculiar penetrating pungency 
totally exhaling in the exsication of the herb, and in the evaporation 
of the liquors. Its principal virtue resides in an essential oil, 
obtained by distillation ; this oil is so heavy as to sink in water, but 
of great volatility, subtility, and penetration ; one drop dissolved in 
spirits, or received on sugar, communicates the smell and taste of 
the plant to a quart of wine or spirits.* 
Medical Properties. Scurvy grass is antiseptic, attenuant, 
aperient, diuretic, and is said to remove obstructions of the viscera, 
and remoter glands, without irritating or heating the system. It is 
considered the most effectual of all the antiscorbutic plants; we 
have the testimony not only of physicians, but of navigators, in con- 
firmation of this opinion, and it has been noticed that this plant 
grows most abundantly in those high latitudes where scurvy is most 
prevalent. Foster found it in great plenty in the islands of the 
South Sea. A remarkably volatile and pungent spirit, known by the 
* Lewis's Materia Medica. 
