Pennyroyal is so well known unto all, I mean the common kind, that it needs no description.
There is a greater kind than the ordinary sort found wild with us, which so abides, being brought into gardens, and differs not from it, but only in the largeness of the leaves and stalks, in rising higher, and not creeping upon the ground so much. The flowers whereof are purple, growing in rundles about the stalks like the other.
Place.] The first, which is common in gardens, grows also in many moist and watery places of this land.
The second is found wild in effect in divers places by the highways from London to Colchester, and thereabouts, more abundantly than in any other counties, and is also planted in their gardens in Essex.
Time.] They flower in the latter end of Summer, about August.
Government and virtues.] The herb is under Venus. Dioscorides saith, that Pennyroyal makes thin tough phlegm, warms the coldness of any part whereto it is applied, and digests raw or corrupt matter; Being boiled and drank, it provokes women’s courses, and expels the dead child and after-birth, and stays the disposition to vomit, being taken in water and vinegar mingled together. And being mingled with honey and salt, it voids phlegm out of the lungs, and purges melancholy by the stool. Drank with wine, it helps such as are bitten and stung with venomous beasts, and applied to the nostrils with vinegar, revives those that are fainting and swooning. Being dried and burnt, it strengthens the gums. It is helpful to those that are troubled with the gout, being applied of itself to the place until it was red; and applied in a plaister, it takes away spots or marks in the face; applied with salt, it profits those that are splenetic, or livergrown. The decoction doth help the itch, if washed therewith. The green herb bruised and put into vinegar, cleanses foul ulcers, and takes away the marks of bruises and blows about the eyes, and all discolourings of the face by fire, yea, and the leprosy, being drank and outwardly applied: Boiled in wine with honey and salt, it helps the tooth-ache. It helps the cold griefs by the joints, taking away the pains, and warms the cold part, being fast bound to the place, after a bathing or sweating in a hot house. Pliny adds, that Pennyroyal and Mints together, help faintings, being put into vinegar, and smelled unto, or put into the nostrils or mouth. It eases head-aches, pains of the breast and belly, and gnawings of the stomach; applied with honey, salt, and vinegar, it helps cramps or convulsions of the sinews: Boiled in milk, and drank, it is effectual for the cough, and for ulcers and sores in the mouth; drank in wine it provokes women’s courses, and expels the dead child, and after-birth. Matthiolus saith, The decoction thereof being drank, helps the jaundice and dropsy, all pains of the head and sinews that come of a cold cause, and clears the eye-sight. It helps the lethargy, and applied with barley-meal, helps burnings; and put into the ears, eases the pains of them.
MALE AND FEMALE PEONY.
Descript.] Male Peony rises up with brownish stalks, whereon grow green and reddish leaves, upon a stalk without any particular division in the leaf at all. The flowers stand at the top of the stalks, consisting of five or six broad leaves, of a fair purplish red colour, with many yellow threads in the middle standing about the head, which after rises up to be the seed vessels, divided into two, three, or four crooked pods like horns, which being full ripe, open and turn themselves down backwards, shewing with them divers round, black, shining seeds, having also many crimson grains, intermixed with black, whereby it makes a very pretty shew. The roots are great, thick and long, spreading and running down deep in the ground.
The ordinary Female Peony hath as many stalks, and more leaves on them than the Male; the leaves not so large, but nicked on the edges, some with great and deep, others with small cuts and divisions, of a dead green colour. The flowers are of a strong heady scent, usually smaller, and of a more purple colour than the Male, with yellow thrums about the head, as the Male hath. The seed vessels are like horns, as in the Male, but smaller, the seed is black, but less shining. The root consists of many short tuberous clogs, fastened at the end of long strings, and all from the heads of the roots, which is thick and short, and of the like scent with the Male.
Place and Time.] They grow in gardens, and flower usually about May.