CULPEPER'S COMPLETE HERBAL

BERRY BEARING SOLANUM

Description. The roots of this herb run creeping along on the surface of the earth, being slender, and of a brown colour, shooting up here and there long round stalks half a foot high, having usually four, though sometimes five or six leaves, which are pretty broad and roundish, narrowest next the stalk, and ending in a sharp point; from among these rises a slender stalk two or three inches high, bearing one single flower, composed of four long green leaves, with as many very narrow ones under them, of the same colour, having several stamina among them; in the middle of these grows a roundish black berry, about as big as a grape, of an insipid taste.

Place. It is found in moist shady woods that have a good soil; the nearest place to London that I know of, where it grows, is Chislehurst in Kent, in a wood, by the bog, at the entrance of it next the town.

Time. It flowers in April and May, and the berry is ripe in July.

Government and virtues. It is under the dominion of Saturn. Though this plant was formerly accounted of a poisonous nature, being reckoned amon the aconites, Fuchsius calling it aconitum pardalianches; yet authors who have wrote since, give it quite contrary effects, esteeming it to be a counter poison, and an alexipharmic, and good in malignant and pestilential fevers. Parkinson says, the roots boiled in wine help the cholic, and the leaves applied outwardly, repress tumours and inflammations, especially in the scrotum and testicles, ad ripen pestilential tumours.