Root - Specimen details
| Catalogue Number: 30836 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| No Image | Plant Name | 322.00 DENNSTAEDTIACEAE Pteridium aquilinum | Entry Book Number | 179.1893 | |
| Artefact Name | Root | Vernacular Name | |||
| Iso Country | United States | TDWG Region | United States | ||
| Parts Held | Root | Geography Description | USA, New York | ||
| Uses | RootUse: User: Not defined | TDWG use | |||
| Storage | Bottles, boxes etc | Related Items | |||
| Donor | Greenish Prof HG (FLS) | Donor No | |||
| Donor Date | 15/11/1893 | Donor Notes | |||
| Collector | Collector No | ||||
| Collection Notes | Collection Date | ||||
| Exhibition | Expedition | ||||
| Number Components | Publication | ||||
| Notes: | Label source: Supplied from New York Nov. 15/93 Opuscular source: Sarsaparilla - A curious and interesting drug is one of which four bales were recently shipped from New York and offered as Sarsaparilla. The pieces of which it is composed average perha, ps three feet in length, are very dark brown in colour, irregularly furrowed, usually flattened, and show here and there a rootlet as well as the remains of aerial stems. The cortical portion easily separates, and the central column then readily splits i, nto flattened plates. Under a low power the transverse section shows an external brown layer, consisting of several rows of brown or yellow slightly thickened parenchymatous cells, enclosing a ground tissue loaded with starch, in which are embedded twop, lates of brown prosenchymatous fibres. Between these plates are situated the two principal fibrovascular bundles; arranged in a circle nearer the periphery are a varying number of smaller bundles. Each bundle consists mainly of an internal mass of vessels, and wood parenchyma , the xylem, completely surrounded by a narrow ring of bast, containing sieve tubes and cambiform cells. This is followed by a row of parenchymatous cells with starch, and the whole is enclosed by an endodermis. On separating the ti, ssue into its component cells, the vessels are seen to be scalariform and the sieve tubes acutely pointed. This construction indicates clearly that the drug is the rhizome of a fern, probably polypodiaceous, and possibly a Pteris and this small piece of, the rhizome for which I have to thank Mr Jackson, of Kew, is not at all like our drug. On the other hand Mr Baker suggests an Acrostichum, a climbing fern common in tropical America, and attaining a length of 30 to 40 feet, whilst Pteris is said by Marti, us to range from 1 to 4 feet in length. The structure of the rhizome of Pteris aquilina our common brake fern, agrees well with that supposition, the protophloem entirely surrounding the xylem, as figured by Professor Russow in his 'Comparative Anatomy'., Under the name Polypodium calaguala, Goebel and Kunze describe and figure a fern rhizome which appears to have borne a high reputation in Peru, and which was brought to Europe by the Spaniards at least as early as the 18th century. The description of G, oebel and Kunze applies to the rhizome in question, but the plate shows some difference. Probably, however, we are dealing with a similar drug. From the Pharm. Jour. 11.11.93 p.383. | ||||
| Determinations: | 311.00 PTERIDACEAE Pteris aquilina L. 322.00 DENNSTAEDTIACEAE Pteridium aquilinum Kuhn. | ||||