Scutellaria lateriflora (aerial parts)

Nomenclature

Scutellaria lateriflora L.   Lamiaceae  
Standardized common name (English): skullcap

Botanical Voucher Specimen

Source: MOBOT, Tropicos.org	Source: Botanical Voucher Specimen Library, Alkemists Laboratories

Organoleptic Characteristics

Odor slight; taste slightly bitter. Source: United States Dispensatory (1918)

Macroscopic Characteristics

This plant is smooth or with very fine hair on the upper parts with slender, erect or declining, widely branched stems from one-third to 2 1/2 feet high. The thin, slender-stemmed leaves are somewhat lance-shaped or egg-shaped, 1 to 3 inches long, and coarsely toothed. The blue and whitish, tube shaped flowers appear from July to September. Source: American Medicinal Plants of Commercial Importance (1930) Scutellaria lateriflora is an indigenous, perennial herb, with a stem erect, much branched, quadrangular, smooth, and one or two feet high. The leaves are ovate, acute, dentate, subcordate upon the stem, opposite, and supported upon long petioles. The flowers are small, of a pale blue color, and disposed in long, lateral, 1-sided, leafy racemes. Dried tops are ... about 50 cm. in length, smooth; stem quadrangular, branched; leaves opposite, petiolate, about 5 cm. in length, ovate-lanceolate or ovate-oblong, serrate; flowers about 6 mm. in length, in axillary one-sided racemes, with a pale blue corolla and bilabiate calyx, closed in fruit, the upper lip helmet-shaped. Source: United States Dispensatory (1918) Source: PlantaPhile Source: PlantaPhile

Microscopic Characteristics

Finger like covering trichome with a warted exine from a section of leaf observed at 400x with Acidified Chloral Hydrate Glycerol Solution. Source: Elan M. Sudberg, Alkemist Laboratories	Long thin walled trichome with circular tip observed at 400x with Acidified Chloral Hydrate Glycerol Solution. Source: Elan M. Sudberg, Alkemist Laboratories