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Corn-Honewort

Description. This rises from a long thick white root; the stalks are numerous, round, fleshy, and a foot and a half high: they are of a pale and somewhat blueish green. The leaves grow at equal distances; they usually hang drooping; they are large, finely cut at the edges, and pointed; and they are sometimes spotted with white: their colour is a blueish green. The flowers are small and inconsiderable, and, like the leaves of the plant, hang down: they are yellow in the upper part, and purple at the base, though some are found in our corn-fields quite white.

Place. It grows frequently in corn-fields, but is also found in thick hedges, and shady or moist situations.

Time. It flowers in July.

Government and virtues. It is a flower of the Sun: a great vulnerary. The flower contains a deal of honey-juice; they are cooling and moistening, good for inflammations of the liver, St. Anthony's fire, redness and pimples in the face, being applied to the parts affected as a cataplasm, or cloths dipped in the juice, laid on, and now and then shifted; made into a poultice with hogs-lard, it helps hot swellings and tumours.