Family Herbal - Electric Scotland

FAMILY HERBAL, 291
common in boggy places on our heaths. It grows
six or seven inches high. The leaves all rise im-
are roundish and
mediately from the root : they
hollow, of the breadth of a silver twopence,, and
placed on foot-stalks of an inch long ; they are
covered in a very extraordinary manner with long
red hairs, and in the midst of the hottest days they
have a drop of clear liquour standing on them.
The stalks are slender and naked : at their tops
stand little white flowers, which are succeeded
by seed-vessels, of an oblong form, containing
a multitude of small seeds. The root is fibrous.
The whole is plant used fresh gathered. It is
esteemed a great cordial^ and good against convul-
sions; hysteric disorders, and tremblings of the limbs ;
but it is not much regarded.
Rhubarb ffliabarbarum.
A tall, robust, and not unhandsome plant, a
native of many parts of the East, and of late got
into our gardens, after we had received many others
falsely called its by name.
It grows to three feet in
height. The stalk is
round, thick, striated, and of a greenish colour,
frequently stained with purple. The leaves are
very large, and of a figure approaching to triangular
:
they are broad at the base, small at the point,
and waved all along the edges. These stand on
thick hollowed foot-stalks,
also reddish. The flowers
which are
are whitish,
frequently
small and
inconsiderable : they stand at the tops of the stalks
in the manner of dock-flowers, and make little more
figure ; the seed is triangulated. The root is thick,
long, and often divided toward the bottom ; of a
yellow colour veined with purple, but the purple