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PHARMACEUTICAL BOTANY 
Asclepiadacece or Milkweed Family. — Herbs or shrubs containing 
a milky juice, many species yielding rubber. Leaves entire, more 
or less fleshy, sometimes verticillate. Inflorescence usually a 
dichesial or scorpioid cyme. Flowers regular, pentamerous; sepals 
wooly, small, synsepalous; petals five, rarely four, synpetalous, elon- 
gated into awls; the corolla varying in shape from stellate to cam- 
panulate and in color from pale green to yellow, to greenish-brown, 
chocolate, or from white to yellow, to scarlet, to crimson, to purple, to 
blue; stamens five, epipetalous, fused in relation forming a cylindrical 
swollen mass around the central pistil; filaments flattened and 
furnished with a crown having various appendages; anthers two- 
celled, each cell containing a pollen mass (pollinium), adhering to the 
glandular prominences of the stigma; pistil bicarpellate, superior. 
Fruit typically two dry follicles {Asclepias), rarely becoming succu- 
lent or bladdery. Seeds numerous, compressed, imbricate with a 
comose appendage. 
Official drug Part used Botanical origin 
Asclepias N.F. Roots Asclepias tuberosa 
Condurango N.F. Bark Marsdenia 
Condurango 
IV. Order Contort® or Polemoniales . — Convolvulacea or Morning- 
glory Family. — Frequently herbaceous, more rarely sub-woody, 
woody, perennial climbing plants with underground parts sometimes 
swollen into tuberous roots (Jalap, Sweet Potato, Wild Man of the 
Earth). Stems rarely short, upright or tufted, usually elongate 
and circumnutating in action. Vascular bundles frequently bi- 
collateral. Leaves alternate, simple, exstipulate, varying from 
cordate to cordate-sagittal, to broad reniform to reniform, palmately 
lobed to palmatifid to palmately compound ( Ipomcea shows all these 
transitions). Stem and leaves frequently contain a dull, viscous, 
watery to milky-white juice. Inflorescence a scorpioid cyme be- 
coming reduced in some forms to a solitary flower. Flowers penta- 
merous; sepals five, green, gamosepalous; corolla varying in shape 
from rotate to funnel-like with expanded mouth, in color from 
greenish-yellow to white or through yellowish-pink to scarlet, 
crimson, purple or blue; stamens five, often with the bases of the fila- 
Habitat 
United States 
Peru and Ecuador 
