CULPEPER'S COMPLETE HERBAL

GARDEN STAR-WORT

Description. This grows to about a foot and a half high, with hairy leaves set on the branches, without order; toward the top it is divided into three or four branches, at the end of which grows a yellow flower like a marigold, but with a broader thrum and narrower petala; close under each flower grow six or seven stiff roundish leaves, in form of a star, whence it takes its name: the seed is oblong, thin, and flat, of a blackish colour: the root is small and fibrous, perishing every year.

Place. It grows in Italy, Spain, and the southern parts of France, also in Greece, and here in our gardens.

Time. This flowers in July.

Government and virtues. This is under the dominion of Mercury. The leaves only are used, which the ancient writers commended against buboes and swellings in the groin, the leaves being beaten and applied as a cataplasm, whence the name Inguinalis; and they affirmed what is hardly credible, that held in the hand, or tied about the neck, they would dissolve and dissipate those swellings.