invariably entire; the lower-most, if any, more or less of a minute silvery hoariness especially at the back. Flowers corymbose, sweet-scented. Petals always of a uniform bright golden yellow, not stained with brown or blood-red as in the Garden Ch. Cheiri of England, though the calyx is purplish. Siliqua racemose, erect l|-2 in. long, covered with close hairs chiefly, if not altogether, pointing upwards. Style prominent, crowned with a cloven stigma. Seeds flat, with a narrow membranous, deciduous border at one side as well as the summit of each.
Parts used:—The flowers and seeds.
Uses:—The flowers, said to be cardiac and emmenagogue, are used in paralysis and impotence. The seed is also used as an aphrodisiac (Irvine).
The dried petals are much used in Upper India as an aromatic stimulant (O'Shaughnessy).
The flowers are employed to make a medicated oil; for this purpose they are boiled in olive oil; this prepared oil is much used for enemata (Year-Book of Pharmacy, 1874, p, 622).
By extracting the flowers with low-boiling solvents, a dark-coloured pasty extract is obtained which (after evaporation of the solvent and separation from fatty and waxy matters by strong alcohol) yields, on distillation with steam, a yellowish oil of unpleasant odour having a specific gravity of l.OOl, and distilling under 3 mm. pressure between 40° and 150°C. the yield is about 0*06 per cent- The alcoholic solution shows a feeble bluish fluorescence. A highly diluted alcoholic solution possesses the characteristic odour of the flowers. The oil is found to contain:— Compounds resembling mustard oil, ketones and aldehydes (having the odors of Violets and Hawthorn), nerol, geraniol, benzyl, linalool, indole, methyl antheranilate, acetic acid (probably in combination with benzyl alcohol and linalool), salicylic acid (probably as methyl salicylate) and traces of phenols and lactones. (J. Ch. S. July 15,1911, p. 829).
Cheiranthin is obtained by evaporating the alcoholic or aqueous extract of the leaves or seeds of the wall-flower, removing the inactive oils by light petroleum, treating with lead acetate, and finally salting out the glucoside with magnesium, Sodium or ammonium sulphate, when it separates in small yellow flakes, from which the salts may be removed by means of alcohol and ether. It may also be precipitated by tannin, and in either case still contains an active alkaloid which may be removed by shaking with ether or ethylic acetate. Cheiranthin brings about the characteristic rest is frogs. J. Ch. S. LXXVL, pt. I (1899), p. 378.
