SAPINDUS, the SOAP-BERRY TREE, in botany: A genus of the digynia order, belonging to the octandria class of plants; and in the natural method ranking under the 23d order, Tribulate. The calyx is tetraphyllous; the petals four; the capsules are fleshy, connate, and ventricose.
The species are four, the saponaria, spinosus, trifoliatus, and chinensis. The saponaria, with winged leaves, grows naturally in the islands of the West Indies, where it rises with a woody stalk from 20 to 30 feet high, sending out many branches garnished with winged leaves composed of several pair of spear-shaped lobes. The midrib has a membranaceous or leafy border, running on each side from one pair of lobes to the other, which is broadest in the middle between the lobes; the flowers are produced in loose spikes at the end of the branches; they are small and white, so make no great appearance. These are succeeded by oval berries as large as middling cherries, sometimes
single, at other, two, three, or four are joined together; these have a saponaceous skin or cover, which incloses a very smooth roundish nut of the same form, of a shining black when ripe. The skin or pulp which surrounds the nuts is used in America to wash linen; but it is very apt to burn and destroy it if often used, being of a very acrid nature.
These plants are propagated by seeds; they must be put into small pots, and plunged into a hot-bed of tanners bark. In five or six weeks the plants will appear, when the glasses of the hot-bed should be raised every day in warm weather, to admit fresh air to the plants. In three weeks or a month after the plants appear, they will be fit to be transplanted, when they must be shaken out of the pots, and carefully parted, so as not to injure their roots, and each planted into a separate small pot, and plunged into the hot-bed again, observing to shade them from the sun until they have taken new root; after which time they must have free air admitted to them every day when the weather is warm, and will require to be frequently watered.