THE FULLER’S THISTLE, OR TEASLE.
It is so well known, that it needs no description, being used with the clothworkers.
The wild Teasle is in all things like the former, but that the prickles are small, soft, and upright, not hooked or stiff, and the flowers of this are of a fine blueish, or pale carnation colour, but of the manured kind, whitish.
Place.] The first grows, being sown in gardens or fields for the use of clothworkers: The other near ditches and rills of water in many places of this land.
Time.] They flower in July, and are ripe in the end of August.
Government and virtues.] It is an herb of Venus. Dioscorides saith, That the root bruised and boiled in wine, till it be thick, and kept in a brazen vessel, and after spread as a salve, and applied to the fundament, doth heal the cleft thereof, cankers and fistulas therein, also takes away warts and wens. The juice of the leaves dropped into the ears, kills worms in them. The distilled water of the leaves dropped into the eyes, takes away redness and mists in them that hinder the sight, and is often used by women to preserve their beauty, and to take away redness and inflammations, and all other heat or discolourings.
TREACLE MUSTARD.
Descript.] It rises up with a hard round stalk, about a foot high, parted into some branches, having divers soft green leaves, long and narrow, set thereon, waved, but not cut into the edges, broadest towards the ends, somewhat round pointed; the flowers are white that grow at the tops of the branches, spike-fashion, one above another; after which come round pouches, parted in the middle with a furrow, having one blackish brown seed on either side, somewhat sharp in taste, and smelling of garlick, especially in the fields where it is natural, but not so much in gardens: The roots are small and thready, perishing every year.
Give me leave here to add Mithridate Mustard, although it may seem more properly by the name to belong to M, in the alphabet.