giriparpat :

Morphology:

Podophyllum hexandrum is succulent erect herb, glabrous, up to 30 cm tall with creeping long knotty rhizomes. Stem one or two, simple, leafy without top.

Leaves alternate, palmate, up to 25 cm in diameter, deeply divided in 3-5 lobes, toothed, purple spotted.

Floral Characteristics

Flowers are white to pinkish in colour, 4 cm across, appear in the fork of the stem.

Sepals are 3 in number and petaloid.

Stamens are usually 6. Fruits are ovoid, pulpy 5 cm long and scarlet when ripe.

Histology:

"Rhizome horizontal, nearly cylindrical, jointed, compressed on the upper and lower surfaces, sometimes branched; in pieces from 3 to 20 cm. in length, the intemodes from 2 to 9 mm. in diameter; externally dark brown, longitudinally wrinkled or nearly smooth with irregular, somewhat V-shaped scars of scale leaves, nodes annulate, upper portion marked with large, circular, depressed stem-scars and sometimes with buds or stem-bases; at or near the nodes on the lower portion occur numerous root-scars or roots from 2 to 7 cm. in length and about 2 mm. in thickness; fracture short; internally, bark light brown, wood with small yellowish, vascular bundles, pith large and white; odor slight; taste sweetish, disagreeably bitter and acrid. Under the microscope, a transverse section of the rhizome of Podophyllum shows an outer layer of one or two rows of reddish-brown cells; parenchyma of cortex and pith with numerous single, spherical, polygonal, or 2- to 6-compound starch grains, or rosette aggregates of calcium oxalate; vascular bundles from 24 to 34, arranged in a circle between cortex and pith. The powder is light brown, with a pronounced and characteristic odor; starch grains numerous, spherical, polygonal or 2- to 6-compound, the individual grains from 0.003 to 0.015 mm. in diameter; calcium oxalate crystals few, in rosette aggregates from 0.05 to 0.08 mm. in diameter and occasionally in raphides from 0.03 to 0.09 mm. in length; tracheae with simple pores or reticulate thickenings; fragments of starch-bearing parenchyma and reddish-brown cork cells. Podophyllum yields not more than 3 per cent. of ash

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