VERATRUM VIRIDE (Vert. vir.)

Botanical name : Veratrum viride Ait. Family: Liliaceae

Synonyms : Helonias viridis (Aiton) Ker Gawl, Veratrum eschscholtzii A. Gray, V. parviflorum Michx.

Common names : English: American white hellebore; French: Veratrevert; German: Gruner Germer.

Description : A perennial herb, with coarse, thick, fleshy, rhizomes, more or less horizontal, with numerous white rootlets upon the lower parts, having a strong, unpleasant odour when fresh, nearly odour-less when dried. Stem upto 1⅓ meter high, stout, erect simple, leafy to the top, striated and pubescent; leaves 3-ranked, broadly-oval, strongly plaited sheath clasping, acuminate the lower leaves 15 to 30 cm long, curly, decreasing in size upwards to mere lanceolate bracts. Flowers polygamous, yellowish-green on pedicles much shorter than bracts, are in dense, spreading, spike like racemes on roundish, downy peduncles, composing a terminal pyramidal panicle.

Macroscopical : Rhizome about 5 to 8 cm long, 2 to 3.5 cm wide, sub-cylindrical and obconical below and crowned with the remains of concentrically arranged leaf- bases cut off level with the top of rhizome; grey, rough and enveloped externally with very numerous stout, yellowish-brown, transversely shriveled roots or showing root scars; taste bitter and acrid.

Microscopical : The diagnostic characters are: dark brown polyhedral cork cells; cortical parenchyma, containing simple and compound starch grains- measuring 4-8 to 14-20 µ and bundles of a acicular crystals of calcium oxalate; yellowish cells of the endodermis, thickened on the inner and lateral walls; pitted vessels of the xylem; root showing an outer layer of axially elongated, thickened, brown cells and pitted, elongated cells of the endodermis.

Habitat : Indigenous to North America from Canada to Georgia.

History and authority : Introduced in Homoeopathic practice in 1862. Allg. Home. zeit. IXIV M 626. Allen’s Encyclop. Mat. Med. Vol. X 95, 639.

Part used : Rhizome.

Preparation : (a) Mother Tincture φ Drug strength 1/10 Veratrum Viride in coarse powder 100 g Purified Water 233 ml Strong Alcohol 800 ml to make one thousand millilitres of the Mother Tincture.

(b) Potencies: 2x and higher with Dispensing Alcohol.

Old method : Class III