Home › Contents › Marsh Sow-Thistle Tree

Marsh Sow-Thistle Tree

Description. The stalk of this kind is hollow, tender, of a pale green, and grows sometimes to a yard and a half high. The leaves are soft and tender, of a light green, and pale underneath, shaped like arrow-heads at their base. The flowers are of a light yellow, very numerous, and they stand in a broad clustering head.

Place. This is a biennial; a native of the Thames-sides, and frequent in other wet places where there is a deep mud: a vast and not unhandsome plant. Time. It blows in August.

Government and virtues. It is under Venus. The whole plant has a very insipid taste. Sow-thistle is cooling, and somewhat binding, and is very fit to cool a hot stomach, and ease the pains thereof. The herb boiled in wine, is very helpful to stay the dissolution of the stomach; and the milk that is taken from the stalks when they are broken, given in drink, is beneficial to those that are short-winded, and have a wheezing. Pliny says, that it has caused the gravel and stone to be voided by urine; and that the heating thereof helps a stinking breath. The decoetion of the leaves and stalks causes abundance of milk in nurses, and their children to be well coloured. The juice or distilled water is good for all hot inflammations, wheals, eruptions or heat in the skin, and itching of the haemorrhoids. The juice boiled or thoroughly heated in a little oil of bitter almonds in the peel of a pomegranate, and dropped into the ears is a sure remedy for deafness, singings, &c. Three spoonfuls of the juice taken warmed in white-wine and some wine put thereto, causes women in travail to have so easy and speedy delivery, that they may be able to walk presently after. It is wonderfully good for women to wash their faces with, to clear the skin, and give it a lustre.