Important: Safety Warning
This page gives doses of a plant that is acutely poisonous. Foxglove, aconite, deadly nightshade, henbane, thorn-apple and meadow saffron have all killed at quantities close to those prescribed here, and for several of them the fatal dose is a fraction of a teaspoonful. There is no safe domestic preparation of these plants, no reliable way to judge the strength of one you have gathered, and no antidote you could apply at home. Do not gather, prepare, taste or swallow any part of the plant described on this page.
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.
Home › Contents › Of Yellow Wolfes-Bane
Of Yellow Wolfes-Bane
The Description.
THe yellow kinde of Wolfes-bane hath large shining green leaves fashioned like a vine. His stalks grow up to the height of three cubits, bearing very fine yellow floures, fantastically fashioned, and in such manner shaped, that I can very hardly describe them to you. This plant groweth naturally in the darke hilly forrests, & shadowie woods, that are not travelled nor haunted, but by wilde and savage beasts, and is thought to bee the strongest and next unto Thora in his poisoning qualitie, of all the rest of the Aconites, or Woolfes banes; insomuch that if a few of the floures be chewed in the mouth, and spit forth againe presently, yet forthwith it burneth the jaws and tongue, causing them to swell, and making a certain swimming or giddinesse in the head. This calleth to my remembrance an history of a certain Gentleman dwelling in Lincolneshire, called Mahewe, the true report whereof my very good friend Mr. Nicholas Belson, somtimes Fellow of Kings Colledge in Cambridge, hath delivered unto me: Mr. Mahewe dwelling in Boston, a student in physick, having occasion to ride through the fens of Lincolnshire, found a root that the hogs had turned up, which seemed unto him very strange and unknowne, for that it was in the spring before the leaves were out: this he tasted, and it so inflamed his mouth, tongue, and lips, that it caused them to swell very extremely, so that before he could get to the towne of Boston, he could not speake, and no doubt had lost his life if that the Lord God had not blessed those good remedies which presently he procured and used. I have here thought good to expresse this history, for two speciall causes; the first is, that some industrious and diligent observer of nature may be provoked to seeke forth that venomous plant, or some of his kindes: for I am certainly persuaded that it is either the Thora Valdensium, or Aconitum luteum, whereof this gentleman tasted, which two plants have not at any time bin thought to grow naturally in England: the other cause is, for that I would warne others to beware by that gentlemans harme. Dagger I am of opinion that this root which Mr. Mahewe tasted was of the Ranunculus flammeus major, for that grows plentifully in such places, and is of a very hot taste and hurtfull qualitie.(Dagger) The Place.
The yellow Wolfes-bane groweth in my garden, but not wilde in England, or in any other of these Northerly regions.
The Nature and Vertues.
The facultie of this Aconite, as also of the other Wolfes-banes, is deadly to man, and likewise to all other living creatures.
It is used among the hunters which seeke after wolves, the juice whereof they put into raw flesh which the wolves devoure, and are killed.