IGNATIA, in botany, a genus of the monogymia order, belonging to the pentandria class of plants. The calyx is five-toothed; the corolla is long; the fruit an unilocular plum, with many seeds. There is but one species, the amara, a native of India. The fruit of this tree contains the seeds called St Ignatius's beans.
The best account of the plant that has yet appeared, is that sent by father Camelli to Ray and Petiver, and published in the Philosophical Transactions for the year 1699: he observes, that it grows in the Philippine islands, and winds itself about the tallest trees to the top; that it has large, ribbed, bitter leaves, a flower like that of the pomegranate, and a fruit larger than a melon. Some resemble the fruit to a pomegranate, probably from misapplying Camelli's words. The fruit is covered with a thin, glossy, blackish, green, and as it were marbled shell, under which is lodged another of a stony hardness: within this is contained a soft, yellow, bitterish pulp, in which lie the seeds or beans, to the number commonly of 24, each covered with a silvery down.
The same gentleman gives an account of the virtues attributed to these seeds by the Indians; but experience has shown that they are dangerous. Konig relates, that a person, by drinking some of a spirituous tincture of them instead of aqua vitæ, was thrown into strong convulsions; and Dr Grim, that a dram of the feed in substance occasioned, for a time, a total deprivation of the senses. Others mention violent vomitings and purgings from its use. Neumann hath observed intermitting fevers removed by drinking, on the approach of a paroxysm, an infusion of some grains of the bean made in carduus water: We are not, however, from hence to look upon this medicine as an universal febrifuge, or to use it indiscriminately.
These beans (for so custom requires that we should call them) are about the size of a moderately large nutmeg; in figure somewhat roundish, but extremely irregular, scarcely any two being entirely alike, full of unequal depressions and prominences; in colour, externally yellowish brown, but when the outer skin is taken off, of a blackish brown, and in part quite blackish; in consistence hard and compact as horn, so as not to be reducible into a powdery form, but by cutting or rasping: for all their hardness, however, they are not proof against worms. When fresh, they have somewhat of a musky smell, which by age is lost: their taste is very bitter, resembled by some to that of centaury.
According to some, it is from this plant that the COLUMBO root is obtained.