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.
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Lesser Water Plantain
Description. This is only a smaller plant, not arising to the same height, and the leaves are narrower, yet they have been described as two distinct species; the one with long and narrow leaves; the other with very large and broad leaves. There are two other smaller kinds, the first called floating water plantain, alisma natans; and starry water plantain, alisma damasonium. Description. Both have leaves of the same shade but the flowers are smaller; and of the last the shape is starry, a little resembling the sagittaria, or lesser water star-wort.
Place. They are found in great plenty in watery places, such as the sides of pools, rivers, &c.
Time. They flower in July and August.
Government and virtues. The Moon governs them. The leaves of this plant are cooling and repelling; they are frequently made use of by the country people for fallings down of the fundament and the piles. The juice stops spitting of blood, and bloody urine: and applied to women's breasts, dries up the milk very soon.