CULPEPER'S COMPLETE HERBAL

COMMON SOW-THISTLE

Description. The leaves of this kind half embrace the stalk, which is also tender, hollow, branched, and of a light green, and two feet high. The cups are smooth, the leaves are of a fresh fine green, and full of a milky juice. The flowers are numerous, and of a pale lemon colour.

Place. This is an annual; a robust weed, that rises in all gardens, and waste grounds; troublesome most of all to kitchen gardners.

Time. The plant is but five weeks from its seeds falling to the re-production, flowering, and ripening their seeds again. We call such annual, but it is allowing too much time; many successions rise and decay in the space of a summer. They blow from June to November.

Government and virtues. It is under Venus. Botanista have divided and sub-divided the varieties of this plant, as if they were distinct kinds. The jagged-leaved, the entire leaved, the broad, and the narrow, are all produced from the same seeds, for the seeds of either raises all, so they are only accidntal differences.