OCR Text |
Show COMMON PERUVIAN BARK TREE, 115 HISTORY. The bark commonly called Peruvian bark, of which the Edin- burgh College enumerates three varieties; 1. The common, the yellow of some foreign authors. 2. The yellow, the orange of some foreign authors. 3. The red. By the recent observations of the Spanish botanists, it is now, however, ascertained that these are not only the barks of distinct species of cinchona, but that probably each of them is indiscriminately taken from several different species. Ruiz and Pavon have described fifteen species natives of Peru and Chili 3 and if to them we addthose of Tafalla and Vahl, twenty-five distinct species have been described, of which seven have been found mitts Cr ota COMMON PERUVIAN BARKTREE. CINCHONA OFFICINALIS. Class V. Pentandria. Essent. Gen. Coan. Order I. Monogynia. Corolla funnel-shape, petals woolly at their edges: Capsule beneath, two-celled with paralle l dissepiment. Srxc. Cuan. woolly. Leaves elliptic, underneath pubescent: Limb of the corolla a ry DESCRIPTION. Tur tree which produces the bark varies in its size. Woodville describes it as very lofty, and sending off large branches. Its leaves are oblong, three inchesin length, and about an inch and a half in breadth, The flowers stand in clusters at the extremities of the branches, and are composed of a single tubular petal, whose border is divided into five segments. These are succeeded by capsules of the shape of an olive, which when ripe split open lengthwise, discovering two cells divided by a mem. brane, and contain each a number of small flatted seeds surrounded with a membranous edge. in North America in the neighbourhood of Santa Fé, by Mutis. Cinchona, considered as a genus, is a mountainous tree, and is never found in the plains. It grows to a great height, andfor. merly its trunk was often thicker than a man’s body. But since its bark has come into such general use, few trees are to be seen thicker than the arm. Indeed there is reason to fear that it will become still more scarce, as no attention is paid to its cultivation, andthe trees always die after being stripped of their bark. This operation is performed in the dry season, from September to November. The bark is then carefully dried in the sun, and packed in skins, which contain from 100 to 150 pounds, and are called by the Spaniards zeronne. In these, coarse and fine pieces of the same kind of bark are promiscuously mixed, but they are afterwards sorted. 1. Common pale bark. This is said to be the bark of the Cinchona cordifolia of Mutis, under which he includes the ‘hirSuta, ovata, purpurea, and micrantha of the Flora Peruviana, the officinalis of Linneus, and the pubescens of Vahl. In commerce we find several varieties of the common pale bark, the most remarkable of which are, the quilled bark, which comes from Loxa, and the flat bark, from Guanaco. The bark which comes from Loxa consists of thin, singly or doubly rolled, pieces, four or five inches long, and scarcely a line in thickness ; externally rough, of a grayish brownco lour, and generally covered with a kindof lichen ; internally of a cin- namon colour. Its fracture should not be fibrous or powdery, but even and shining. It has a peculiar aromatic smell, and a pleasant, bitter, astringent taste. 12 |