CULPEPER'S COMPLETE HERBAL

CUDWEED

Names. Besides cudweed, it is also called cottonweed, chaff-weed, dwarf cotton, and petty cotton.

Description. The common cudweed riseth up with one stalk, though sometimes two or three, thick set on all sides with small, long, and narrow whitish or woody leaves, from the middle of the stalk almost up to the top; with every leaf standeth a small flower, of a dun or brownish yellow colour, or not so yellow as others; in which herbs, after the flowers are fallen, come small seed wrapped up with the down therein, and is carried away with the wind. The root is small and thready.

There are other sorts hereof, which are somewhat less than the former, not much different, save only that the stalks and leaves are shorter, and the flow

ers are paler, and more open.

Place. They grow in dry, barren, sandy, and gravelly grounds, in most places of this land.

Time. They flower about July, some earlier and some later, and their seed is ripe in August.

Government and virtues. Venus is lady of it. The plants are all astringent, or dry and binding, and therefore profitable for defluxions of rheum from the head, and to stays fluxes of blood wheresoever. The decoction made into red wine and drunk, or the powder taken therein, also helpeth the bloody flux, and easeth the torments that come thereby, stayeth the immoderate courses of women, and is also good for inward or outward wounds, hurts, and bruises, and helpeth children both of burstings and the worms, and the disease called tenesmus, (which is an often provocation to the stool, and doing nothing,) being either drunk or injected. The green leaves bruised and laid to any green wound, stayeth the bleeding, and healeth it up quickly. The juice of the herb taken in wine and milk, is (as Pliny saith) a sovereign remedy against the mumps and quinsey; and further saith, that whosoever shall so take it, shall never be troubled with that disease again. The tops of this plant, before it has reached its full growth, have the same virtue. I have seen it used only in one place. It is frequent in Charlton Forest, in Sussex, and was given with success for that almost incurable disease, the chin-cough. Beat it up into a conserve, very fine, with a deal of sugar, and let the bigness of a pea be eaten at a time.