CHAPTER I.
ERYTHROXYLON COCA,
ITS BOTANICAL CHARACTER.
Coca is indigenous to South America. The different botanists disagree as to which exact family it should be assigned. Linnæus, De Candolle, Payer, Raymundi of Lima, Huntk, and others, place it in the family of the Erythroxyleæ, of which there exists but one genus, the Erythroxylon, while Jussien adopts another classification and places it in the family of the Malpighiaceæ (genus Sethia). Lamarck, on the contrary, believes that this plant should be classed among the family of Nerprem (Rhamneæ).
Erythroxylon Coca is a shrub which reaches a height of from six to nine feet and the stem is of about the thickness of a finger. In our climate it cannot thrive except in a hot-house, and there its height does not exceed one metre.
The root, rather thick, shows multiple and uniform divisions; its trunk is covered with a ridged bark, rugged, nearly always glabrous, and of a whitish color. Its boughs and branches, rather numerous, are alternant, sometimes covered with thorns when the plant is cultivated in a soil which is not well adapted to it.
The leaves, which fall spontaneously at the end of each season, are alternate, petiolate, with double intra-accillary stipules at the base. In shape they are elliptical-lanceolate, their size varying according to the nature of the plant or of the soil in which it grows.
The leaf of Coca gathered in Peru, of which we give two figures of the natural size, is generally larger and thicker than the leaf of the Bolivian Coca. It is also richer in the alkaloid, consequently much more bitter.