Pharmacognostic Survey on Paeonia Broteri – An Iberian Endemism

The genus Paeonia (Paeoniaceae) includes perennial plants distributed throughout the northern hemisphere and some of these are used in traditional medicine and cultivated as ornamental species. Paeonia broteri is endemic to Iberian Peninsula and the current paper is the first report on a pharmacognostic survey on its roots, leaves and corresponding powders. Using light and scanning electron microscopy, simple and compound polyhedral starch grains, with a fissure-type hilum and no striae, are recorded in the root phelloderm cells and the presence of idioblasts with druse-type calcium oxalate crystals, in addition to isolated stone cells, are also common. Irregular and sinuous epidermal cells can be detected on both leaf surfaces and anomocytic stomata, with an elliptical-rounded shape, are only on the abaxial face. In leaves, druse-type calcium oxalate crystals appear along the vascular tissues. The histochemical tests allowed the in situ localization of some chemical groups and the most relevant detected were polyphenols and terpenoids.