CULPEPER'S COMPLETE HERBAL

DOG-ROSE

Name. Called also wild-rose.

Description. The dog-rose has winged leaves like garden roses, but smoother and greener; the flowers are single, of five white, and sometimes pale red leaves, and when they are fallen, there succeed roundish red seed vessels, full of pulp, enclosing white cornered seed, covered with short stiff hairs. On the stalks of this plant grow a green spungy exeressence, made by small flies.

Place. It grows commonly in the edges about Cambridge.

Time. It flowers in May and June, and the seed is ripe at the beginning of September.

Government and virtues. It is under the dominion of the moon. The flowers of the wild-briar are accounted more restringent than the garden-roses, and by some are reckoned as a specific for the excess of the catamenia. The pulp of the hips has a pleasant grateful acidity, strengthens the stomach, cools the heat of fevers, is pectoral, good for coughs and spitting of blood, and the scurvy. The seed has been known to do great things against the stone and gravel; and the same virtues are attributed to the spongy excresence which grows upon the stalk. The best way of preserving its virtues is, by keeping it conserved.