NAT. ORDER. 
Solanacece 
STEYCHNQS NUX VOMICA. VOMIC NUT OR POISON NUT. 
Class V. Pentandria. Order I. Monogynia. 
Gen. Char. Corolla, five-parted. Berry, one-celled, with a woody- 
rind. 
Spe. Char. Leaves, ovate. Stem, erect. 
This is a large tree, sending- off numerous strong- branches, cover- 
ed with dark gray, smooth bark ; the young branches have swelled 
articulations, or a knotty jointed appearance, scandent, and covered 
with a bark of a dark green color ; the leaves start from the joints in 
pairs, upon short footstalks, and are ovate, broad, pointed, entire, with 
three or five ribs, and on the upper side of a shining green color ; the 
flowers terminate the branches in a kind of fasciculated umbel ; calyx 
small, tubular, five-toothed ; corolla monopetalous ; tube cylindrical, or 
rather inflated at the middle, very long, and at the limb cut into five 
small ovate segments ; filaments five, short, fixed at the mouth of the 
tube, and furnished with simple anthers ; germen roundish, supporting 
a simple style, terminated by a blunt stigma ; fruit a round, smooth, 
large, pulpy berry, externally yellow, and containing round depressed 
seeds, covered with downy radiated hairs. 
This tree is a native of the East Indies, and, according to history, 
was introduced into England in 1778, by Dr. Partrick Russel, but has 
never yet been cultivated with success in that country. The nux 
vomica, lignum colubrinum, and faba sancti Ignatii, have been long 
known in the Materia Medica as narcotic poisons, brought from the 
Vol. in.— 176. 
