Spathacea.

COLCHICUM AUTUMNALE

MEADOW SAFFRON.

Class VI. HEXANDRIA. Order III. TRIGYGNIA.

Gen. Char.

Corolla six-parted, with a rooted bulb. Capsules three, connected, inflated.

Spe. Char. Leaves flat, lanceolate, erect.

The root is perennial, consisting of a solid double succulent bulb, covered with a brown membranous coat; the leaves appear in the spring, and are numerous, radical, spear-shaped, one or two of which are much narrower than the others; the flowers are large, of a purplish color, and rise immediately from the root upon a long naked tube; calyx none; the corolla is monopetalous, and divided into six lance-shaped, large, erect segments, of a pale purple color; the filaments are six, tapering, white, much shorter than the corolla, and furnished with erect, pointed yellow anthers; the germen is lodged at the root, from which issue three slender styles, reflexed at the top, and terminated by simple pointed stigmas; the capsule is three-lobed, divided into three cells, containing numerous small globular seeds, which do not ripen until the succeeding spring, when the capsule rises above the ground upon a strong peduncle.

temperate parts of EuVarious attempts have

Colchicum Autumnale is a native of the rope, where it grows wild in moist meadows. been made to introduce its culture into this country, but with no very encouraging success. The officinal portions are the bulb or cormus, and the seeds. The root, botanically speaking, consists of the fibres

which are attached to the base of the bulb. The flowers have been found to possess similar virtues with the bulb and seeds, but have not been adopted in the pharmacopoeias.

Medical Properties and Uses. Colchicum Autumnale is one of the most active medicines ever introduced into medical practice. It possesses diaphoretic, diuretic, cathartic, and emetic properties. Baron Stoerck asserts, that on cutting the fresh root into slices, the acrid particles emitted from it irritated the nostrils, fauces, and breast, and that the ends of the fingers with which it had been held, became for a time benumbed; that even a single grain in a crumb of bread, taken internally, produced a burning heat and pain in the stomach and bowels, urgent strangury, tenesmus, colic pains, cephalalgia, hiccup, &c. From this account we need not be surprised that we find so many melancholy instances recorded where it has proved a fatal poison both to man and brute animals; also of its effects upon children, who have accidentally partaken of the bulbs, in whom it occasioned the symptoms alone. Two boys, after eating this plant, which they found growing in a meadow, died in great agony. Violent symptoms have been produced by taking three of the flowers; the seeds also will produce the same effect. Deer, oxen, and other animals have fallen a sacrifice to this poison; and according to Stoerck two drachms of the root killed a dog in thirteen hours, and upon opening its abdomen the stomach and bowels were found to be greatly inflamed, or in a gangrenous state. When applied to the skin it produces similar effects as when taken into the stomach, which must depend on its being absorbed and taken into the circulation.