CULPEPER'S COMPLETE HERBAL

CROWFOOT

Names. Many are the names this furious biting herb has obtained; it is called frog's foot, from the Greek name barrakion, crow-foot, gold-knobs, gold-cups, king's-knob, baffiners, troil-flowers, polts, locket-goulions, and butter-flowers.

Abundant are the sorts of this herb, and to describe them all would tire the patience of Socrates himself; therefore I shall only mention the most usual.

Description. The most common crowfoot hath many dark-green leaves, cut into divers parts, in taste biting and sharp, and blistering the tongue; it bears many flowers, and those of a bright resplendant yellow colour. I do not remember that I ever saw any thing yellower. Virgins in ancient times used to make powder of them to furrow bride beds. After the flowers come small heads, some spiked and rugged like a pine-apple.

Place. They grow very common everywhere; unless you turn your head into a hedge, you cannot but see them as you walk.

Time. They flower in May and June, even till September.

Government and virtues. This fiery and hot-spirited herb of Mars is no way fit to be given inwardly, but an ointment of the leaves of flowers will draw a blister, and may be so fitly applied to the nape of the neck, to draw back rheum from the eyes. The herb being bruised, and mixed with a little mustard, draws a blister as well and as perfectly as cantharides, and with far less danger to the vessels of urine, which cantharides naturally delight to wrong. I knew the herb once applied to a pestilential rising that was fallen down, and it saved life even beyond hope; it were good keeping an ointment and plaister of it, if it were but for that.