RHAMNUS catharticus.
Buckthorn.
PENTANE RIA Monogynia.
G en. C har. Cal. tubular. Petals 5, opposite to the
stamina. Berry superiör, with few seeds.
Spec. Char. Spines terminal. Flowers four-cleft, dioecious.
Leaves ovate. Stem upright. Seeds four.
Syn. Rhamntls catharticus. Linn. Sp. PL 279. Sm.
FI. Brit. 2 6 1 . Huds. 9 8 . With. 2 5 6 . Hull. 53.
Relh. 9 4 . Sibth. 82. Hbbot. 52. Woodv. Med.
Bot. t. 114. FI. Dan. t. 850. Raii Syn. 466.
N o t rare in hedges and bushy places, flowering in May or
June, and ripening its berries about Michaelmas.
It forms a hard, rigid, spreading shrub, with alternate, or
often nearly opposite, branches, each tipped with a strong
thorn. First leaves in clusters from the flowering buds, but
those on the fresh branches are opposite; all grow on downy
footstalks, and are ovate, serrated, strongly veined, downy
when young, deciduous. Stipulse linear, soon falling off.
Flowers on short, simple, clustered stalks, yellowish green.
Calyx-lobes, petals and stamina 4 . Lobes of the stigma 4,
sometimes but 3, and the seeds agree with them in number.
In flowers with perfect stamina the petals are elliptical, and
the germen for the most part obsolete and abortive; in those
with a fertile germen the petals are linear, and the stamina
scarcely more than minute bristles. Sometimes, however, both
organs are perfect in the same flower. The berries are globular,
black, nauseous, well known for their purgative quality,
which is not of the mildest or most salubrious kind. In an
unripe state they dye yellow, but are esteemed far inferior to
those of R. infectorius brought from the Levant.