3. The third kind, which is the Sea Plantain, hath small and narrow leaves like Bucks-Horn, but without any manifest incisure, cuttings or notches upon the one side: among which riseth up a spiky stalk, like the common kind, but smaller.

            4. These two following plants are by Clusius and Bauhin referred to this tribe; wherefore I think it fitting to place them here. The former of them from a reddish, and as it were scaly root growing less by little and little, and divided into fibres, sends forth many leaves, narrow, hoary, an handful long, and having three nerves or ribs running alongst each of them: amongst these come forth divers footstalks, covered with a soft reddish down; and being some two or three inches long, having heads somewhat thick and reddish: the flowers are whitish, with a blackish middle, which makes it seem as if it were perforated or holed. Now when the plant grows old, and withers, the stalks becoming more thick and stiff, bend down their heads towards the root, so that in some sort they resemble the foot of a lion.

Fig. 643. The other Candia Lion's Foot (5)

            5. This Plant which is figured in the upper place (for I take the lower to be an exacter figure of the last described) hath leaves like to the small Sea Plantain, but tenderer, and standing upright; and amongst these on little footstalks grow heads like those of Psyllium, but prettier, and of a whitish red colour.

The Place.

            1,2. The two first grow in most of the kingdoms of Spain. Carolus Clusius writeth, that he never saw greater or whiter than near to Valencia a city of Spain, by the highway. Since, they have been found at Bastable in the Isle of Wight, and in the Isles of Guernsey and Jersey.

            3. The third doth grow near unto the sea in all the places about England where I have travelled, especially by the forts on both the sides of the water at Gravesend; at Erith near London; at Lee in Essex; at Rye in Kent; at Westchester, and at Bristol.

            4,5. The fourth and fifth grow in Candia, from whence they have been sent to Padua and divers other places.

The Names.

            Holosteum is also called by Dodonæus, Plantago angustifolia albida, or Plantago hispaniensis: in English, Spanish hairy small Plantain, or flowering Sea Plantain.

            The fourth is called by Clusius, Leontopodium creticum: by some it hath been thought to be Catanance of Dioscorides: the which Honorius Bellus will not allow of: Bauhin calls it Holosteum, sive leontopodium creticum.

            The fifth is Leontopodivim creticum alterum of Clusius; the Habbures of Camerarius; and the Holosteum creticum alterum of Bauhin.

The Temperature and Virtues.

            Galen saith, That Holsteum is of a binding and drying faculty.

            A. Galen, Dioscorides, and Pliny have proved it to be such an excellent wound herb, that it presently closeth or shutteth up a wound, though it be very great and large: and by the same authority I speak it, that if it be put into a pot where many pieces of flesh are boiling, it will solder them together.

            These herbs have the same faculties and virtues that the other Plantains have, and are thought to be the best of all the kinds.