ANCHUSA TINCTORI A.— DYER’S ALKANET. 
Class V. PENTANDRIA.— Order I. MONOGYNIA. 
Natural Order, BORAGINE^E. THE BORAGE TRIBE. 
Fig. (a) the flower somewhat magnified, showing (he stamens and arched valves; (6) the calyx and pistil a little magnified; (c) the fruit. 
This plant is a perennial, a native of the south of Europe, and was found by Sibthorp in Greece. It is 
sometimes raised in our gardens; but the roots do not acquire in this country the fine red colour for which 
the foreign alkanet is prized. It has long been extensively cultivated for medicinal purposes in the neigh- 
bourhood of Montpellier, in France. It flowers from June to October. 
The root is woody, long, round, tapering, branched, and covered with a blackish-red coloured bark. 
The herb is all over rough with short bristly hairs, proceeding from small cartilaginous tubercles or warts. 
Several stems arise from one root ; they are round, leafy, branched, panicled above, and about a foot or 
eighteen inches high. The leaves are oblong, entire, convex above, and keeled underneath ; the radical ones 
forming a tuft on the ground, elongated and tapering towards the base ; the rest smaller, alternate, slightly 
dilated at the base, and partly embracing the stem. The spikes are generally in pairs, bent towards the 
top, many-flowered, with ovate bracteas, twice the length of the calyx. The calyx is reddish, with short 
hairs, and divided into five oblong-lanceolate segments. The corolla is funnel-shaped, consisting of a 
straight cylindrical tube, tumid at the lower part, closed at the mouth with five small roundish convex 
valves, and divided at the limb into five deep, obtuse, equal segments, of a deep azure colour. The filaments 
are shorter than the corolla, bearing roundish anthers : the carpels four, with awl-shaped styles, nearly as 
long as the tube, with a small notched stigma. The seeds are oblong, and rough with tubercles. 
Qualities and Chemical Properties. — Alkanet root, as met with in commerce, is inodorous and 
nearly tasteless. The red colouring matter, according to Pelletier, with which the cortical part abounds, is 
of a brownish red colour, runs into a mass, which breaks with a resinous fracture, is soluble in alcohol, 
ether, and fat oils, which it colours red, while they preserve their transparency. It imparts scarcely any 
colour to water. It forms blue combinations with potass, soda, barytes, strontia, and lime : is decomposed 
by the action of concentrated sulphuric acid ; and is converted into oxalic acid by nitric acid. When pre- 
cipitated from its alcoholic menstrua by the aid of metallic solutions, it forms an excellent varnish. This 
colouring matter is considered by John to be a peculiar proximate principle which he has called Pseudo- 
Alkannin. M. Chevreul has lately discovered in the Anchusa tinctoria, and in the root of the Viburnum 
Opulus a new acid, which he terms Phocdnique. Sometimes the roots of the Onosma echioides, and O. 
tinctoria, are substituted for the Anchusa tinctoria. Anchusa Virginiana and Ecliium rubrum have roots 
almost equally rich in colouring matter with the true alkanet, and are sometimes used instead of it. Bergius 
states that the roots of the Borago officinalis are occasionally boiled in a decoction of Brazil wood, and sold 
for alkanet: the fraud, however, is easily detected by inspection, and by the substitute failing to yield its 
colour to the fixed oils. 
Uses. — This plant was formerly administered as an astringent ; but has given place to medicines much 
more worthy of regard. It is useless, excepting as a colouring matter for oils, lip-salve, and plasters. 
“ But what is a plant ?” says Professor Burnett, in his introductory Lecture, at King’s College, “what 
do we mean by this word vegetable ? It is a term the most ignorant presume they understand, although the 
most learned are unable exactly to define: for a plant is, indeed, as Theophrastus long ago observed, “a 
various thing, of which it is difficult to give a definition.” 
Tell a clown that it is difficult to distinguish between an animal and a plant, he will smile incredulously, 
and perhaps will say, can I mistake man-orchis roots for men ? but shew him a conferva and a polype, a. 
