Important: Safety Warning
This page prescribes plants as medicine according to pre-modern medical theory. Several of the plants named are toxic, correct identification is difficult, and the doses given have no scientific basis. Do not ingest or apply any preparation described here.
This information has been left in for historical purposes but should not be acted upon.
Cornel-Tree
Name. Called also dog-berry.
Description. This tree is usually of the bigness of an ordinary cherry-tree, with leaves somewhat alike, but broader, smoother, and not serrated about the edges. The flowers grow in clusters, being small and yellow. The fruit is longish, of a cylindrical shape, about as big as a luke-olive, of a black colour when ripe, including a long hard stone. It is of a sweet, but somewhat astringent taste.
Place. It grows in gardens.
Time. It flowers in March and April; but the fruit is not ripe until September.
Government and virtues.] This tree is under Venus. The fruit is cooling, drying, binding, and strengthening to the stomach, and good in hysteric fits. The <??> way of giving it, is in syrup or conserve, or the expressed juice with honey or mum.