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.
Good Henry
Name. Called also English mercury, Description. This mercury has a thick, yellowish, perenial root, with several fibres; the leaves grow upon long foot-stalks of a triangular shape, like spinach, of a yellow green colour, feeling greasy or unctuous in handling. The stalks grow to be about a foot high, with several of the like leaves growing on them; and on their tops spikes of small herbaceous flowers, inclosing little round black shining seed.
Place. It grows in waste places, and among rubbish.
Time. It flowers in spring.
Government and virtues, It is under the dominion of Mercury. This herb is detersive and diuretic, and therefore deserves a place in vulnerary decoctions and fomentations. In this country it is deservedly preferred to spinach, to which it is much superior in firmness and flavour as goose-foot is inferior to it. The young shoots, the succeeding leaves, and at last the flowery tops, are fit for kitchen purpose, which has gained it the name of good Henry. It is cooling, soluble, and good for the scurvy, and provokes urine; outwardly, it is much used in glysters, and a cataplasm of the leaves helps pains of the gout. The only officiual preparation is the Mel Mertriale.