Staphylea trifolia. Bladder Nut.

Description: Natural Order, Sapindaceae. A sub-order in the same Family with the maples, horse-chestnut, and buck- eye. Upright and handsome shrubs from six to ten feet high, with greenish and striped branches. Leaves opposite, of three oval leaflets, pointed, serrate, pale beneath. Flowers perfect, regular, in short and drooping racemed clusters at the end of the branches. Calyx and corolla both white or yellowish-white, five-parted throughout, petals on a thick ridge which lines the disk of the calyx. Fruit a large, membranous pod, inflated, three-lobed, three-celled, looking bladdery, (and not watery, as in ptelea,) and containing from one to four long seeds in each cell.

Properties and Uses: The bark of this plant, especially that from the root, is a pleasant bitter tonic, of the soothing order, relaxant and but moderately stimulant, and acting on the nervous system as well as the stomach. It increases appetite and digestion moderately well, sustains the uterine structures to good advantage, and is of value in feebleness of the stomach, mild prolapsus, and hysteria. The stomach receives it well, and is not irritated by it. Dose, a fluid ounce of infusion made by digesting an ounce of the bark in eight ounces of water.

The Physiomedical Dispensatory, 1869, was written by William Cook, M.D.
It was scanned by Paul Bergner at http://medherb.com