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.
Sneezewort
Name. Called also bastard pellitory.
Description. This has a perennial, long, slender, and fibrous root. The stems are a little angular, upright, woolly, branched, and two feet high, having long narrow leaves, finely serrated about the edges, growing on them without any order; the flowers grow umbel-fashion on the tops of the stalks, consisting of a border of white petala, set about a fistular thrum: they are larger than the flowers of yarrow.
Place. It grows in moist meadows, and in watery places. Time. It flowers in July.
Virtues. It is of a hot biting taste, and therefore it is sometimes put into salads to correct the coldness of other herbs. The root held in the mouth helps the tooth ach, by evacuating the rheum, like pellitory of Spain; the powder of the herb snuffed up the nose, causes sneezing, and cleanses the head of tough slimy humours.