CANELLA ALBA —WHITE, OR LAUREL-LEAVED CANELLA. 
Class XL MONADELPHIA.— Order I. DODECANDRIA. 
Natural Order, MELIACEHL THE BREAD-TREE TRIBE. 
Fig. («.) a flower, with its petals forcibly expanded; (6.) the fruit; (c.) the pistil standing on the 3-lobed calyx 
magnified, with the two stigmas. 
The Canella is a common tree in most of the West India islands, and on the continent of South America, 
growing in the inland woods, where it attains a considerable size. 
The stem rises from ten to fifteen feet in height, very straight and upright, and divided only at the 
top. The branches are erect, and not spreading ; furnished with petiolated leaves, irregularly alternate, 
oblong, obtuse, entire, of a dark green colour, thick like those of the laurel, and 'shining. The bark is 
whitish, by which it is commonly known at first sight in the woods. The flowers, which grow at the 
extremities of the branches in clusters upon divided foot-stalks, are small, of a violet colour, and seldom 
open. The calyx is 5-leaved, and persistent; the sepals are roundish, concave, smooth, and membranous. 
The petals are five times as long as the calyx, oblong, sessile, concave, erect, two a little narrower than 
the others. The stamens are monadelphous, the filaments forming an urceolate tube, sometimes called a 
nectary, to the outer side of which the anthers adhere. The germen is superior, within the nectary-like 
tube, ovate, and 3-celled ; the style is cylindrical, with three rough, convex, blunt stigmas. The fruit is an 
oblong, fleshy, 3, or by abortion 1-celled, smooth, black 1-2 seeded berry. The seeds are exalbuminous, 
the embryo curved, and the cotyledons linear. The annexed plate represents a branch of the tree in flower, 
and the berries of their natural size. 
About the year 1579, as Captain Winter, who commanded the Elizabeth, which formed part of the 
squadron under the command of Sir Francis Drake, was sailing through the straits of Magellan, he discovered 
the Wintera aromatica, which yields a bark, first mentioned, described, and named by Clusius, as Cortex Win- 
teranus, in compliment to the discoverer. Clusius was the first, also, to record the introduction of Canella 
'alba, about the beginning of the seventeenth century ; which Parkinson says, was in his time often mis- 
taken for Winter’s bark : it was John Bauhin, however, who first confounded the names, by styling Cortex 
Winteranus, Canella alba: and although Sir Hans Sloane gave separate descriptions of each in the Tran- 
sactions of the Royal Society, the botanical distinctions were paid so little attention to by Lemery, Pomet 
and other writers on the materia medica, that Linneeus himself was led into error, and combined two dif- 
ferent genera under the name of Laurus Winterana. He afterwards separated the Canella alba from Lauras, 
and established it as a distinct genus, by the name Winterania; under which title it has been universally, 
but very improperly known for while the tree we have figured comes, as we have already stated, from the 
West Indies, the Wintera aromatica, whose existence remained in oblivion nearly a century, during which 
" time the bark of the former was substituted for it, is found in the neighbourhood of the Antarctic regions, 
and belongs to a different class. An excellent plate of it is given in Vol. V. of Medical Observations and In- 
quiries, and to that work we are indebted for the subjoined botanical account by Dr. Solander; which it 
will be well to compare with the one already given of Canella alba. 
“ The Winter’s Bark-tree, Winterana aromatica, is one of the largest forest trees upon Terra del Fuego ; 
it often rises to the height of fifty feet. Its outward bark is, on the trunk, grey, and very little wrinkled, 
on the branches quite smooth and green. 
“The branches do not spread horizontally, but bent upwards, and form an elegant head of an oval 
shape. 
“The leaves come out, without order, of an oval elliptic shape, quite entire, obtuse, flat, smooth, 
shining, of a thick, leathery substance, evergreen, on the upper side of a lively deep green colour, and of a 
pale bluish colour underneath, without any nei'ves, and their veins scarcely visible; they are somewhat 
narrower near the footstalks, and there their margins are bent downwards. 
“In general, the leaves are from three to four inches long, and between one and two broad ; they have 
very short footstalks, seldom half an inch long, which are smooth, concave on the upper side, and convex 
underneath. From the scars of the old footstalks the branches are often tuberculated. 
“ The peduncles, or footstalks for the flowers, come out of the axillae foliorum, near the extremity of 
the branches ; they are flat, of a pale colour, twice or three times shorter than the leaves ; now and then 
they support only one flower, but are oftener near the top divided into three short branches, each with one 
flower. 
“The bractece are oblong, pointed, concave, entire, thick, whitish, and situated one at the basis of each 
peduncle. 
