Family Herbal - Electric Scotland

FAMILY HERBAL. 31
some! imps the divisions are fewer. The flowers
are very large and beautiful, they are as big as
a common single rose, or nearly so ; they are
white, reddish, or greenish, according to the time
of their having been open ; and they stand each
on a single stalk, which rises from the root, and
has no leaves on it. It flowers in January.
The root is an excellent purge, it works briskly
but safely ; it destroys worms, and is good in
dropsies, jaundice, and many other diseases, and
even in madness. But it is very necessary to keep
it in one's own garden, for, if the root be bought,
they commonly sell that of the green flowered,
wild or bastard hellebore in its place, which is a
rough medicine.
Ladies' Bedstraw, Gallium lutcum*
A PRETTY wild plant, frequent about hedges
in June and the succeeding months. The stalk
is weak and two feet high ; the leaves are of a
blackish green, and small ; and the flowers are
yellow. The stalk is angular and whitish, very
brittle, and seldom straight ;
the leaves stand a great
many at each joint, and are disposed about the
small,
stalk like the
narrow, and
rowels of a
: spur the flowers grow in great tufts on the
tops of the stalks, so that they make a very
conspicuous appearance, though singly they are
very small.
This herb is little regarded, but it has verv
great virtue ; it should be gathered., when the
flowers are not quite blown, and dried in the
shade. An infusion of it will cure the most violent
bleedings at the nose, and almost all other evacuations
of blood.