CULPEPER'S COMPLETE HERBAL

CREEPING TORMENTIL

Description. This is a beautiful little plant, which has been ranked among the cinquefoils. The root is composed of a small head, and a great quantity of fibres, which are brown, tough, and of an austere taste. The leaves are beautifully divided; they stand on short, reddish foot-stalks, which are weak, and a little hairy; they are of a fine green colour, and sharply serrated. The stalks rise in the centre of these, four or five from each head of the root; they are long, slender, reddish, and run upon the ground like those of cinquefoil, and send roots at every joint downwards, and tufts of leaves, and often stalks upwards. The flowers are moderately large, and of a beautiful yellow, with a little tuft of paler threads in the centre, and when these fall, the seeds rigen in a small oval cluster.

Place. It is not common. It is sometimes on the edge of Charlton forest in Sussex.

Virtues. Its virtues are of the same kind with the former described, but in a less degree. The flowers are very drying and binding, good for diarrhæas and dystenteries, especially attended with malignant fevers: they being also accounted alexipharmic. They are serviceable in hæmorrhages of the nose, mouth or womb; they fasten loose teeth, and help the falling of the uvula. It is likewise a cordial and sudorific, and therefore excellently adapted for feverish complaints attended with pox, but when a purging comes on improperly in that disorder, nothing excels it. The root in powder is good for those that spit blood, also against the bleeding piles, bloody stools, and immoderate menses.