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.
Whortle
Description. The red Whortle is a small shrub, with slender purplish branches. The leaves are roundish and of a dark green, obtuse at the ends, and not at all serrated at the edges. The flowers are greenish, with a tinge of red; the berries are round, red, and well tasted.
Place. This species of the bilberry-bush is common in our northern counties on boggy ground.
Time. It flowers in May.
Virtues. The bark of the root is somewhat warm and dry, opens obstructions of the liver and spleen, and helps the jaundice. The unripe fruit is drying and binding, useful in all kinds of fluxes, and very good for inflammations in the mouth and throat. The ripe fruit is cooling, and somewhat loosening, good to allay the heat of burning fevers; it is grateful to the stomach, and creates an appetite.