Important: Safety Warning
This page states that certain wild plants are safe to eat. Its identifications and edibility claims are more than a century old and in some cases simply wrong, and deadly look-alikes exist for many edible species. Never eat a wild plant on the strength of this text.
In addition, 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.
Eveweed
Description. This grows with a round, upright firm stalk, but the top of it usually drops. The leaves are placed irregularly on it, and are oblong and broad at the base: they are dented along the edges, and sharp at the point; their colour is a dusky green at the bottom, but the upper ones grow lighter. The flowers are large, sometimes white and blue, or purple. In the gardens where it has found place, the flowers grow larger; and the gardeners not very nice or careful about names, call it striped or double-rocket. Place. It is a native of our northern counties, Cumberland and Westmoreland. Time. It flowers in May.
Government and virtues. It is a plant of Mars, yet it is accounted a good wound-herb. Some eat it with bread and butter on account of its taste, which resembles garlic. Its juice, taken a spoonful at a time, is excellent against obstructions of the viscera: it works by urine. In some places it is a constant ingredient in clysters.