in botany: A genus of the monogynia order belonging to the dodecandra clas of plants; and in the natural method ranking under the 12th order, Holacaceae. The calyx is three-lobed; the petals are five; the anthera 16, growing to an unilocular or bladder-shaped nectarium; and the fruit is a trilocular berry, with two seeds. There is but one species, the alba; which grows usually about 20 feet high, and eight or ten inches in thickness, in the thick woods of most of the Bahama islands. The leaves are narrow at the stalk, growing wider at their ends, which are broad and rounding, having a middle rib only; they are very smooth, and of a light shining green. In May and June the flowers, which are pentapetalous, come forth in clusters at the ends of the branches; they are red, and very fragrant, and are succeeded by round berries, of the size of large peas, green, and when ripe (which is in February) purple, containing two shining black seeds, flat on one side, otherwise not unlike in shape pl. CXVI. to a kidney bean: these seeds in the berry are enveloped in a slimy mucilage. The whole plant is very aromatic, the bark particularly, being more used in distilling, and in greater esteem, in the more northern parts of the world than in Britain.

The bark is the canella alba of the shops. It is brought to us rolled up into long quills, thicker than cinnamon, and both outwardly and inwardly of a whitish colour, lightly inclining to yellow. Infusions of it in water are of a yellowish colour, and smell of the canella; but they are rather bitter than aromatic. Tinctures in rectified spirit have the warmth of the bark, but little of its smell. Proof-spirit dissolves the aromatic as well as the bitter matter of the canella, and is therefore the best menstruum.

The canella is the interior bark freed from an outward thin Canelle thin rough one, and dried in the shade. The shops distinguish two sorts of canella, differing from each other in the length and thickness of the quills: they are both the bark of the same tree; the thicker being taken from the trunk, and the thinner from the branches. This bark is a warm pungent aromatic, though not of the most agreeable kind: nor are any of the preparations of it very grateful.

Canella alba is often employed where a warm stimulant to the stomach is necessary, and as a corrigent of other articles. It is now, however, little used in composition by the London college; the only official formula which it enters being the pulvis aloeticus: but with the Edinburgh college it is an ingredient in the tinctura amara, vinum amarum, vinum rhei, &c. It is useful as covering the taste of some other articles.—This bark has been confounded with that called Winter's bark, which belongs to a very different tree. See Wintera.