ANATOMY OF THE RHIZOME
Scraped rhizome with buff external surface showing longitudinal striations and occasional loose fibers, outer surface dark brown and more or less covered with cork which shows conspicuous, narrow, longitudinal and transverse ridges; the cork readily exfoliates from lateral surfaces but persists between branches.
Smoothed transversely cut surface exhibiting a narrow cortex separated by an endodermis from a much wider stele, numerous widely scattered fibrovascular bundles, abundant scattered oleoresin cells with yellow contents.
Starch abundant in the thin-walled ground tissue, as flattened, ovate to subrectangular, transversely straited, simple granules, each with the hilum in a projection towards one end. Pigments cells with dark reddish brown contents occurring either singly in the ground tissue or in axial rows accompanying the vascular bundles.
Vessels with spiral or reticulate thickening in the scattered vascular bundles are found. Irregularly shaped thin-walled fibers with delicate, transverse septa, yielding only slightly the reaction characteristic of lignin. Sclereids and calcium oxalate crystals absent.
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