B shows
another piece enlarged to double linear size.
The internodes are smooth, the rootlets being attached at the nodes. The
rootlets are filiform, and darker in color.
The rhizome is covered by an epidermis, composed of muriform cells of a
bright yellow color, after having been treated with liquor potassae to
clear up the tissues. These cells are shown in Fig. G. An examination of
the transverse section shows us the endogenous structure, as we find
it also in various other drugs (sarsaparilla, etc.), namely, a nucleus
sheath, inclosing the fibrovascular bundles and pith, and surrounded
by a peri-ligneous or peri-nuclear portion, consisting of soft-walled
parenchyma cells, loosely arranged with many small, irregularly
triangular, intercellular spaces in the tranverse section. Some of these
cells contain bundles of raphides (Fig. 2), one of which bundles is
shown crushed in Fig. J. Sometimes these crystals are coarser and less
needle-like, as in Fig. K. Fig. C shows a transverse section through the
leaf-bearing portion of the rhizome (at a), and is rather irregular on
account of the fibrovascular bundles diverging into the base of the
leaves of flower-stalks.
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