CULPEPER'S COMPLETE HERBAL

ANNUAL ROCKET CRESS

Description. This plant is sometimes improperly called cressling. In some measure it resembles the garden rocket, but does not grow so tall. The root is slender, long, hard, and furnished with many fibres: the first leaves are numerous, long, and irregularly divided in the pinnated manner, with a pointed odd segment at the end. The stalks are numerous, round, and upright, and the leaves on them stand irregularly; they resemble those from teh root, but they are more deeply divided, and of a lighter green. The flowers stand in a loose spike at the top of the stalks, and are of a faint yellow, with some streaks of black.

Place. It grows, but not frequently, upon the northern mountains. Some has been observed growing upon Salisbury plain.

Time. It is annual, and blows in July.

Government and virtues. This species is under Venus, and is celebrated as a provocative to venery: but its virtues in this respect is inferior to those of the cultivated kind. However, the juide is excellent in asthmas, and all diseases of the lungs. The best way of using it is in the form of a syrup, in which manner it relieves all oppressions and stuffings of the breast: as also against inveterate coughs and severe colds in the stomach.