THE TUTSAN— continued. 
so that the ovary may be one-chambered or three- to five-chambered. The seeds 
are exalbuminous. 
The Sub-Family Hypericoidece , which includes a few small genera in addition to 
Hypericum , are further characterised by having their styles in general free. Anthers 
and stigmas are usually mature at the same time ; but the stigmas are frequently 
thrust outwards by the divergent styles between the tufts of stamens, and in this 
way a cross may be effected when insects alight on the petals. 
The uniformly yellow flowers and tufted stamens render the two hundred species 
of Hypericum so obviously a natural group that we follow the general practice of 
British botanists in treating them all as one genus, although there is a good deal to 
be said for the continental practice of dividing it into several. The Tutsan 
( Hypericum Androscemum Linne) belongs to a sub-genus or Section, the genus 
Androscemum of Allioni, distinguished by deciduous petals, five bundles of stamens 
with no intervening glands, and a one-chambered ovary with three only partially 
ingrown placentas and three styles. 
It is a shrubby, glabrous plant, one to two feet high, with quadrangular 
compressed branches and sessile ovate or oblong leaves, which have their pellucid 
glands very minute and close together and give off a strong aromatic smell when 
they are rubbed. The inflorescence is a few-flowered, corymbose, trichasial cyme : 
the flowers are from half an inch to three-quarters of an inch in diameter : the 
sepals are blunt and have black glands but not on their margins : the petals are very 
oblique at the base ; and the fruit becomes a globose, purplish-black, somewhat pulpy 
capsule with three short hooked styles. Though essentially belonging to Central and 
Southern Europe, this species is certainly indigenous throughout the British Isles. 
Dioscorides uses the name ’AuSpoaaipou, Androsaimon, from avSpos, andros , 
man’s, aqua, haima, blood, probably from the claret-coloured juice of the capsule, 
though Fuchs says “ they have said that the flower rubbed in the fingers, emits a 
blood-coloured juice.” Gerard says : — 
“ The leves, floures, and seeds stamped, and put into a glasse with oile olive, and set in the sunne for certain weekes, doth 
make an oile of the colour of blood, which is a most pretious remedy for deep wounds, and those that are thorow the body. 
. . . The leves laide upon broken shins and scabbed legs healeth them, and many other hurtes and griefes, whereof it tooke 
his name Tout-saine or Tutsane, of healing all things.” 
This name Tutsan has been variously corrupted into Touch-leaf , Touch-and-heal , 
and Tipsy-leaf ; and, by a complete misunderstanding, has been translated into 
All Saints’ Wort — a most inappropriate name for a species that flowers in July and 
August. Though its repute as a vulnerary was undoubtedly based on the doctrine 
of signatures, the balsamic astringent juice has some efficacy, so that the present 
complete neglect of the plant is not altogether merited. A pretty local name for it, 
recorded by Messrs. Britten and Holland from Sussex, is Sweet Amber, given on 
account of its resinous smell. 
