Spec. Plant. Willd. i. 1092. Cl. 5. Ord. 1. Pentandria Monogynia. Nat. ord. Rhamnaceae. G. 405. Calyx tubular. Corolla, scales defending the stamens, inserted into the calyx. Berry. * Thorny. Species 1. R. catharticus.- Purging Buckthorn. Med. Bot. 3d edit. 594. t.210.

1 Cattle leave this plant untouched, however scanty their pasture may be; indeed all the species of ranunculus are equally rejected.

2 Purgierdorn (G.), Purgerende wegedoorn (Dutch), Korsbaerton (Dan.), Ge-lappel (Swed.), Ramno cartico (S.), Escambrociro (Port.), Pridoroschnoja igolka (Russ.), Szaklak krzetvia (Pol.).

Officinal Rhamnus, Lond. Rhamni cathartici succus, Edin. Rhamnus catharticus; baccae, Dub. Buckthorn berries.

Syn. Nerprun (F.), Kreutz beeren (G), Bacche del spino Cervino (I.).

This is an indigenous shrub, growing in woods and hedges near brooks; flowering in May and June, and ripening its fruit in October. It rises with a strong, rigid, woody stem, sending off alternate round branches, which terminate in a spine. The leaves are in fascicles, on footstalks, ovate, serrated, nerved; and the younger are downy: the flowers come from the same buds as the leaves; they are peduncled, of a greenish yellow colour, four-cleft; and frequently, but not always, they are male and female upon different plants: the anthers are round, on short filaments which rise from the base of a small convex scale: the germen is ovate, with a slender style and four-cleft stigma: the fruit is a small, round, black, four-seeded berry, about the size of a pea, compressed on one side.1

These berries are said to be often mixed with those of the black-berried alder and of the dogberry tree: but as the buckthorn berry has four seeds, while the others have only two and one, it can be easily distinguished.

Qualities.-The odour of these berries is faint and unpleasant; the taste bitterish, acrid, and nauseous. They are very succulent, and yield by expression a deep green juice, or a purple juice if they be gathered late in the autumn; but it soon ferments, acetic acid is formed, and the juice becomes red.

Medical properties and uses.-The berries, and their expressed juice, are briskly cathartic; but their operation is accompanied with thirst and severe griping, which is not altogether mitigated by the most plentiful dilution. They were formerly much used as a hydragogue purgative, but are now very seldom prescribed. The dose of the recent berries is 3 j., of the dried 3j., and that of the expressed juice f j.

Officinal preparation.-Syrupus Rhamni, L. E.