The fruit-stalk is very short, bearing a subglobose fruit an inch or rather more in diameter, of an orange-yellow colour, and with a sweetish astringent pulp. It is surrounded at the base by the persistent calyxlobes, which increase in size as the fruit ripens.
The milk of the cow, which may be taken as typical of all others, and is indeed by far the most important and valuable of all, is, when newly drawn, an opaque white fluid, with a yellowish tinge, soft, bland and sweetish to the taste, and possessed of a faintly animal odour.
The taste is mucilaginous, sweetish and slightly bitter and aromatic. The root is frequently forked, and it is probably owing to this circumstance that medicinal properties were in the first place attributed to it, its resemblance to the body of a man being supposed to indicate that it could restore virile power to the aged and impotent.
Beryllium salts are easily soluble and mostly have a sweetish taste (hence the name Glucinum, from yXv,dc, sweet); they are readily precipitated by alkaline sulphides with formation of the white hydroxide, and may be distinguished from salts of all other metals by the solubility of the oxide in ammonium carbonate.
It is a colourless liquid with a sweetish burning taste and an agreeable odour.