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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Ribwort Plantain
Description. This plantain has longer and much narrower leaves than the former, sharp pointed, and having five remarkable ribs, or nerves, running quite through them to the root, which is less and more stringy than the former: the flowers grow at the end of long slender stalks in oblong spikes, about an inch long; they are small and staminous, with white spices. The seeds grow like the former, but are somewhat larger.
Place. It grows in fields and meadows.
Time. The flowers appear in May and June.
Government and virtues. The leaves are restringent and vulnerary, and may be used in the same purpose with the former. Some commend the juice of it to be given before the returning fit of an ague, to lessen its effect.