The Description.

            1. Saint John's Wort hath brownish stalks beset with many small and narrow leaves, which if you behold betwixt your eyes and the light do appear as it were bored or thrust through in an infinite number of places with pins' points. The branches divide themselves into sundry small twigs, at the top whereof do grow many yellow flowers, which with the leaves bruised do yield a reddish juice of the colour of blood. The seed is contained in little sharp pointed husks, black of colour, and smelling like rosin. The root is long, yellow, and of a woody substance.

            2. The second kind of St. John's Wort named Syriacum, of those that have not seen the fruitful and plentiful fields of England, wherein it groweth abundantly, having small leaves at almost like to Rue or Herb-Grace: wherein Dodonæus hath failed, entitling the true Androsæmum by the name of Ruta sylvestris; whereas indeed it is no more like Rue than an apple to an oyster. This plant is altogether like the precedent, but smaller, wherein consisteth the difference.

Fig. 812. Lobel's Woolly St. John's Wort (3a)

            3a. Woolly St. John's Wort hath many small weak branches trailing upon the ground, beset with many little leaves, covered over with a certain soft kind of downiness: among which cometh forth weak and tender branches charged with small pale yellow flowers. The seeds and roots are like unto the true St. John's Wort.

Fig. 813. Clusius' Woolly St. John's Wort (3b)

            3b. There is another Woolly St. John's Wort described by Clusius, which is taller, more white and hairy, and hath the flowers growing along little footstalks, and not in the manner of an umbel, as in the other.

Fig. 814. Small Creeping St. John's Wort (4)

            4. Besides these two creeping hoary St. John's Worts here described, there is another small kind which is called by Dodonæus, Hypericum minus; and by Lobel, Hypericum minimum supinum septentrionale. It grows four handful or more high, with weak and slender branches set with leaves like those of the ordinary kind, but less: the flowers are also like those of the first described, but fewer in number, and less. It is to be found in dry and barren grounds, and flowers at the same time as the the former.

            5. I have observed growing in St. John's wood and other places, that kind of St. John's Wort which by Tragus is called Hypericum pulchrum; and both by him and Lonicerus is thought to be Dioscorides his Androsæmum; the which we in English may for distinction's sake call Upright Saint John's Wort. It hath roots like those of the ordinary kind; from which arise straight slender stalks some cubit high, set at equal spaces with pretty smooth leaves, broad, and almost encompassing the stalk at their setting on, and being sometimes of a green, and otherwhiles of a reddish colour: towards the top they are parted into some few branches, which bear such yellow flowers as the common kind, but somewhat smaller. It flowers about the same time as the former, or a little later.

The Place

They grow very plentifully in the pastures in every country.

The Time.

They flower and flourish for the most part in July and August.

The Names.

S. John's wort is called in Latin, Hypericum: in shops, Perforata: of divers, Fuga dæmonum: in Dutch, San Johans kraut: in Italian, Hyperico: in Spanish, Caraconzillo: in French, Mille Pertuis: in English, St. John's Wort, or St. John's Grass.

The Temperature.

            St. John's Wort (as Galen teacheth) is hot and dry, being of substance thin.

The Virtues.

            A. St. John's Wort with his flowers and seed boiled and drunken, provoketh urine, and is right good against the stone in the bladder, and stoppeth the lask. The leaves stamped are good to be laid upon burnings, scaldings, and all wounds; and also for rotten and filthy ulcers.

            B. The leaves, flowers, and seeds stamped, and put into a glass with olive oil, and set in the hot sun for certain weeks together, and then drained from those herbs, and the like quantity of new put in, and sunned in like manner, doth make an oil of the colour of blood, which is a most precious remedy for deep wounds, and those that are through the body, for sinews that are pricked, or any wound made with a venomed weapon. I am accustomed to make a compound oil hereof; the making of which ye shall receive at my hands, because that I know in the world there is not a better, no not natural balsam itself; for I dare undertake to cure any such wound as absolutely in each respect, if not sooner and better, as any man whatsoever shall or may with natural balsam.

Take white wine two pints, olive oil four pounds, oil of Turpentine two pounds, the leaves, flowers and seeds of St. John's Wort, of each two great handfuls gently bruised; put them all together into a great double glass, and set it in the sun eight or ten days; then boil them in the same glass per balneum Mariæ, that is, in a kettle of water with some straw in the bottom, wherein the glass must stand to boil: which done, strain the liquor from the herbs, and do as you did before, putting in the like quantity of herbs, flowers, and seeds, but not any more wine. And so have you a great secret for the purposes aforesaid.

            C. Dioscorides saith, That the seed drunk for the space of forty days together, cureth the sciatica, and all aches that happen in the hips.

            D. The same author saith, That being taken with wine it taketh away tertian and quartan agues.