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D A P H N E Mezereum.
Common Mezereon.
OCTANDRIA Monogynia.
G e n . C h a r . Cal. 4-cleft, resembling a corolla, withering
but permanent, enclosing the stamina. B erry
with one seed.
S p e c . C h a r . Flowers sessile, about three together,
placed on the stem. Leaves lanceolate, deciduous.
Syn. Daphne Mezereum. Linn. S p. PL 509. Sm.
F I. B rit. 420. Hurls. 167- With. 376. Hull. 85.
I Woodv. M ed. Bot. t. 23. Meyrick Misc. Bot, t. 1.
M il l e r assures us in his Dictionary that this favourite
shrub, so common in plantations, had been in his time discovered
wild in woods near Andover, Hampshire, and that
the gardens had been plentifully supplied from thence. It is
said on good authority to grow also in Suffolk and Staffordshire.
The flowers expand in March or earlier, before the
leaves, and are remarkable for their beauty and powerful fragrance.
The scarlet berries ripen in July, if the birds, which
is rarely the case, suffer them to remain so long.
This shrub is commonly 4 or 5 feet high, much branched,
tough and pliant, smooth in every part except the tube of the
calyx. Leaves lanceolate, entire, deciduous. Flowers sessile
in lateral scattered clusters, of a fine rose-colour, (sometimes
white,) their calyx being of the nature of a corolla in texture
and colour; and indeed botanists dispute about its proper denomination.
Stamina short, fixed in the tube in two rows.
Berry with one large seed.
Every partjff the plant is extremely acrid] but the bark of
the root is given in decoction, where great debility or insensibility
of the stomach or throat requires so violent a stimulus. -& *rrJZ.xa°4-. ^uZ *X **Z V -T iiS