[2624] The common Smilax aspera L., of Southern Europe, is a plant which presents such diversity of foliage, that if like its congeners of Tropical America, it were known only by a few leafy scraps preserved in herbaria, it would assuredly have been referred to several species.
[2625] Kunth, Synopsis Plant. i. (1822) 278.—Smilax officinalis is a large, strong climber, attaining a height of 40 to 50 feet, with a perfectly square stem armed with prickles at the angles. The leaves are often a foot in length, of variable form, being triangular, ovate-oblong, or oblong-lanceolate, either gradually narrowing towards the apex or rounded and apiculate, and at the base either attenuated into the petiole, or truncate, or cordate. They are usually 5-nerved, the 3 inner nerves being prominent and enclosing an elliptic area. The flowers are in stalked umbels. A fine specimen of the plant is most luxuriantly growing since many years in the Royal Gardens, Kew, but has not flowered.
[2626] We owe them to the kindness of H. J. Kemble, Esq., who procured them, with specimens of the root, from the Government garden at Castleton.
[2627] Figured in Nees von Esenbeck’s Plantæ Medicinales, suppl. tab. 7.
[2628] Lamarck, Encyclopédie méthodique, Bot., vi. 1804. 468.
[2629] Flor. Bras. i. (1842-71) tab. 1.
[2630] It must not be supposed that all species of Smilax are capable of furnishing the drug. There are many, even South American, which like the S. aspera of Europe, have thin, wiry roots, which would never pass for medicinal sarsaparilla.
[2631] Monographiæ phanerogamarum, i. (1878) 6-199.
[2632] Pages 18 and 88 of the work [quoted in the Appendix].
[2633] Parte primera de la Chronica del Peru, Sevilla, 1553, folio lxix.—a translation for the Hakluyt Society in 1864, by Markham, who observes that Cieza de Leon never himself visited Guayaquil.