CULPEPER'S COMPLETE HERBAL

STORAX TREE

Description. There are accounted three sorts. The common storax tree grows very like the Quince Tree both for form and size, the leaves also are long and round, somewhat like, but far less, whitish underneath, and stiff. The flowers stand both at the joints with the leaves, and at the ends of the branches, consisting of five or six large whitish leaves, like those of the orange tree, with some threads in the middle, after which come round berries set in the cups that the flowers were in before, of the size of hazle-nuts, pointed at the ends, and hoary all over, each standing on a long foot-stalk, containing within them certain kernels in small shells, and yielding a clear fragrant gum of the colour of brown honey. The second kind of storax has three or five broad leaves, like those of the maple or plane-tree, which come forth out of knots from a round root, covered with a crested, or, as it were, a jointed bark, and stankding on small blackish long stalks, divided ito three or five parts, full of veins, dented about the edges, and pointed at the ends. The third sort is called the red storax.

Place. The first grows in Provence in France, in Italy, Candia, Greece, and some other parts of Turkey, where it yields no gum; but in Syria, Cilicia, Pamphylia, Cyprus, and those hotter countries, it thrives considerably.

Time. It flowers in the Spring, and yields fruit in September.

Government and virtues. This is a Solar plant, and only the gum is used. It is hot in the second degree, and dry in the first. It heals, molifies, and digests, and is good for coughs, catarrhs, distillations of rheum and hoarseness. Pills thereof, with a little turpentine, gently loosen the belly. It resists cold poisons. Dropped into the ears, it helps the singing and noise in them. Applied to parts afflicted with cold aches, it gives much comfort and ease, and is good to be put in baths for lameness and weakness. It is also good to put with white frankincence to perfume those that have catarrhs, rheums, and defluxions from the head to the nose, or other parts, by casting it on quick coals, and holding the head over the smoke. It dissolves hard tumours in any part, and is good for the king's evil.