Family Herbal - Electric Scotland

350 FAMILY HERBAL,
they are broad, roundish, and of a deepgreen colour ;
they are of a fleshy substance, and stand each on
a separate foot-stalk cf three or four inches long.
The flowers are small, and of a very bright white;
they stand in a kind of loose spike on the tops of
the stalks. The root is composed of a quantity of
thick whitish fibres.
The leaves are used. A decoction of them with
a piece of cinnamon, and a little red wine, is giver
against the overflowings of the menses, bloody 3too!s,
and all haemorrhages, and against ulcers in the
urinary passages, and bloody urine.
Woad. Giastum.
A PLANT cultivated in fields, in many parts
of England, for the use of the dyer3, and com-
near those where it wat
monly met with in places
sown, as if a wild plant ; but it is not properly a
native of our country. It is a tall, erect, and handsome
; plant the stalk is round, thick, firm, upright,
and four feet high ; but it is usually so covered
with the leaves, that scarce any part of it is to be
ieen naked. The leaves arc long and of a considerable
breadth. They arc large at the base, where
they grow to the stalk, without any foot-stalks ;
and narrower all the way to the point. They are
of a bluish green colour, and the whole plant is
covered with them, so the top has a pretty aspect.
The flowers arc little and yellow ; they stand in
great numbers about the tops of the stalks, which
are divided into a multitude of small branches;
and they are succeeded by small seed vessels. The
root is long and thick.
Although the dyers arc the people who pay
most regard to woad, and for whose use it is cul-
tivated, it has virtues that demand for it a great