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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Long Cyperus
Description. It is a foot and a half high. The leaves are a foot long or more, narrow, grassy, and of a bright green colour, flat, and sharp at the ends. The stalk is triangular and green; there are no leaves on it, except two or three small ones at the top, from which there rises a number of small tufts or spikes of flowers. These are brown, light, chaffy, and in all respects like those of the other water grasses.
Place. It is a wild plant in our marshes, fens, and other damp places. Virtues. The root is used. It is long and brown, and, when dried, is of a pleasant smell, and aromatic warm taste. It should be taken up in spring. It is good against pains in the head, and it promotes urine.