CULPEPER'S COMPLETE HERBAL

MOUNTAIN POLEY

Description. This polium grows about a foot high much branced, with squarish woolly stalks, having two small white woolly leaves at a joint, not above half an inch long, and scarce half so broad, blunt pointed, and indented about the edges towards their end. The flowers grow at the end of the branches in roundish woolly thick spikes, small, and of a white colour labiated, but having no galea, being set in white hoary, five-pointed calices: both leaves and flowers have a pleasant aromatic scent.

Place. It grows in Italy, and the southern parts of France, but bears the cold of our winters, if care be taken to secure it from teh severity of the frost in a greenhouse.

Time. It flowers in July and August.

Government and virtues. Mountain poley is under the dominion of Venus. It is opening and attenuating, good for obstructions of the liver and spleen; it is also good in dropsical cases and the jaundice; it provokes urine and the menses, and is serviceable in cases of bites of venomous creatures. It is also an ingredient in the theriaca andromachi. Outwardly applied, it is emollient, ripening and dissolving, good for hard tumours and swellings, and is frequently put into plaisters and ointments for those purposes.