The Description.

            1. The great Fig-Wort springeth up with stalks four-square, two cubits high, of a dark purple colour, and hollow within: the leaves grow always by couples, as it were from one joint, opposite, or standing one right against another, broad, sharp pointed, snipped round about the edges like the leaves of the greater Nettle, but bigger, blacker, and nothing at all stinging when they be touched: the flowers in the tops of the branches are of a dark purple colour, very like in form to little helmets: then cometh up little small seed in pretty round buttons, but sharp at the end: the root is whitish, beset with little knobs and bunches as it were knots and kernels.

            2. There is another Fig-wort called Scrophularia indica, that hath many and great branches trailing here and there upon the ground, full of leaves, in fashion like the wild or common Thistle, but altogether without pricks: among the leaves appear the flowers in fashion like a hood, on the outside of a faint colour, and within intermixed with purple; which being fallen and withered, there come in place small knops very hard to break, and sharp at the point as a bodkin: which containeth a small seed like unto Thyme. The whole plant perisheth at the first approch of winter, and must be sown again in April, in good and fertile ground. This is the Scrophularia cretica 1 of Clusius.

Fig. 1065. Yellow-Flowered Fig-Wort (3)

            3. The stalk of this is also square, and some yard high, set with leaves like those of the hedge Nettle, but somewhat larger and thicker, and a little deeper cut in: out of the bosoms of these leaves come little rough footstalks some inch or two long, carrying some four or five hollow round flowers of a greenish yellow colour, with some threads in them, being open at the top, and cut in with five little gashes: the seeds are black, and contained in vessels like those of the first described: the root is like that of the Nettle, and lives many years: it flowers in May, and the seeds are ripe in June. I have not found nor heard of this wild with us, but seen it flourishing in the garden of my kind friend Mr. John Parkinson. Clusius calls it Lamium 2 pannonicum exoticum: and Bauhin hath set it forth by the name of Scrophularia flore luteo: whom in this I follow.

The Place.

            The great Scrophularia groweth plentifully in shadowy woods, and sometimes in moist meadows, especially in greatest abundance in a wood as you go from London to Hornsey, and also in Stow Wood and Shotover near Oxford.

            The strange Indian figure was sent me from Paris by John Robin the King's herbarist, and it now groweth in my garden.

The Time.

            They flower in June and July.

The Names.

            Fig-wort or Kernel-wort is called in Latin Scrophularia maior, that it might differ from the lesser Celandine, which is likewise called Scrophularia, with this addition minor, the lesser: it is called of some millemorbia, and Castrangula: in English, great Fig-Wort, or Kernel-Wort, but most usually Brownwort.

The Virtues.

            A. Fig-wort is good against the hard kernels which the the Latins call strumæ, and commonly scrophulæ, that is, the King's evil: and it is reported to be a remedy against those diseases whereof it took his name, as also the painful piles and swelling of the hæmorrhoides.

            B. Divers do rashly teach, that if it be hanged about the neck, or else carried about one, it keepeth a man in health.

            C. Some do stamp the root with butter, and set it in a moist shadowy place fifteen days together: then they do boil it, strain it, and keep it, wherewith they anoint the hard kernels, and the hæmorrhoid veins, or the piles which are in the fundament, and that with good success.