Family Herbal - Electric Scotland

168 FAMILY HERBAL,
Honewort. Selinum siifoliis.
A common plant in corn-fields and dry places,
with extremely beautiful leaves' from the root,
and little umbels of white flowers. It has its
English name from its virtues. Painful swellings
are in some parts of the kingdom called hones, and
the herb, from its singular effect in curing them,
has received the name of honewort, that is, hone-
herb.
The root is long and white ; there rise from it,
early in the spring, half a dozen or more leaves,
which lie spread upon the ground, in an elegant
manner, and are all that is generally observed of
the plant. The stalks do not rise till the end of
summer, and these leaves decay by that time, so
that they are not known to belong to it. These
leaves are ei&'ht inches lonjr, and an inch and a half
in breadth : they are composed each of a double
row of smaller leaves, set on a common rib, with
an odd leaf at the end ; these are oblong, tolerably
broad, and indented in a beautiful manner. They
are of a fresh green colour ; they are the part of
the plant most seen, and the part to be used ; and
they are not easily confounded with those of any
other plant, for there is scarce any that has what
are nearly so handsome. The stalk is two feet high,
round, hollow, upright, but not very firm, and
branched toward the top. The leaves on it are
somewhat like those from the root, but they have
not the singularity of those beautiful and numerous
small ones ; the flowers arc Jittle and white, and
the seeds are small, flatted, striated, and two of them
follow every flower.
The loaves arc to be used ; they
are to be fresh
gathered and beat in .a marble mortar into a kind of
paste. They are to be laid on a swelling
that is