{83}
{84} (8.)
This Plant is taken by our Simplists to be a kind of Golden Rod, by others for Sarazens Consound. I judge it to be a kind of small Sun Flower, or Marygold of the West Indies; the Root is brown and slender, a foot and half in length, running a slope under the upper face of the Earth, with some strings here and there, the stalk as big as the steal of a Tobacco pipe, full of pith, commonly brownish, sometimes purple, three or four foot high, the Leaves grow at a distance one against another, rough, hard, green above, and gray underneath, slightly snipt and the ribs appear most on the back side of the Leaf, the Flower is of a bright yellow, with little yellow cups in the midst, as in the Marygold of Peru, with black threads in them with yellow pointels, the Flower spreads it self abroad out of a cup made up of many green beards, not unlike a Thistle; Within a handful of the top of the stalk (when the Flower is fallen), growes an excrense or knob as big as a Walnut, which being broken yieldeth a kind of Turpentine or rather Rosen.[238]
What Cutchenele is.
The stalk beneath and above the knob, covered with a multitude of small Bugs, about the bigness of a great flea, which I presume will make good Cutchenele, ordered as they should be before they come to have Wings: They make a perfect Scarlet Colour to Paint with, and durable.
{85} 4. Of such Plants as have sprung up since the English Planted and kept Cattle in New-England.[239]
Couch Grass.[240]
Shepherds Purse.[241]