The Description.

            Hedgehog Grass hath long stiff flaggy leaves with stalks proceeding from a thick spreading root; and at the top of every stalk grow certain round and pricking knobs fashioned like an Hedgehog.

            2. The second is rough and hairy: his roots do spread and creep under the mud and mire as Cyperus doth; and at the top of the stalks are certain round soft heads, their colour being brown, intermixed with yellow, so that they look prettily when as they are in their prime.

Fig. 34. Round-headed Silver-Grass (3)

            3. This Grass hath a small and fibrous root, from which rise leaves like those of Wheat, but with some long white hairs upon them like those of the last described: at the tops of the stalks (which are some foot or better high) there grow two or three round heads consisting of soft and white downy threads. These heads are said to shine in the night, and therefore they in Italy call it (according to Cæsalpinus) Luciola, quia noctu lucet.

            4. To this I may add another growing also in Italy, and first described by Fabius Columna. It hath small creeping jointed roots, out of which come small fibres, and leaves little and very narrow at the first, but those that are upon the stalks are as long again, encompassing the stalks, as in Wheat, Dog's-Grass, and the like. These leaves are crested all along, and a little forked at the end: the straw or stalk is very slender, at the top whereof grows a sharp prickly round head, much after the manner of the last described: each of the seed-vessels whereof this head consists ends in a prickly stalk having five or seven points, whereof the uppermost that is in the middle is the longest. The seed that is contained in these prickly vessels is little and transparent, like in colour to that of Cow-Wheat. The flowers (as in others of this kind) hang trembling upon yellowish small threads.

The Place and Time.

            1 & 2. They grow in watery meadows and fields, as you may see in Saint George's fields and such like places.

            3 & 4. Both these grow in divers mountainous places of Italy; the later whereof flowers in May.

The Names.

            1. The first is called Hedgehog Grass, and in Latin, Gramen Echinatum, by reason of those prickles which are like unto a Hedgehog.

            2. The second hairy Grass is called Gramen exile hirsutum Cyperoides, because it is small and little, and rough or hairy like a goat: and Cyperoides, because his roots do spring and creep like the Cyperus.

            3. This by Anguillara is thought to be Combretum of Pliny; it is Gram. lucidum of Tabernamontanus; and Gramen hirsutum capitolo globoso, of Bauhin, Pin. pag. 7.

            4. Fabius Columna calls this, Gramen montanum Echinatum tribuloides capitatum and Bauhin nameth it, Gramen spica subrotunda echinata. We may call it in English, Round-headed Caltrop Grass.

The Virtues

            3. The head of this (which I have thought good to call Silver-Grass) is very good to be applied to green wounds, and effectual to stay bleeding, Cæsalp.