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.
Skirret
Description. The root for which this plant, is mostly cultivated, is composed of numerous, oblong, tuberous pieces, brownish on the outside, white within, and of a pleasant flower. The stalk is striated, firm, branched, and a foot and a half high. The leaves are pinnated, serrated, sharp-pointed, and of a pleasant green. The flowers are white; and toward the evening, they have a light fragrance. The seeds are small and brown.
Place. It is originally a native of Spain, but are here cultivated in gardens for the root which is pleasant and wholesome.
Time. It flowers here in June and July.
Government and virtues. Skirret is under Venus, The root is opening, and is diuretic and cleansing; of great use in opening obstructions of the reins and bladder, freeing them from slimy plegm. It is also of service against the dropsy, by causing great plenty of urine, and helps the jaundice, and other weaknesses of the liver. The young shoots are pleasant and wholesome food of a cleansing nature, and light digestion, provoking urine, to which they give a foeted stinking smell.