The Description.

            1. This plant (which the modern Writers have referred to the Cacalia of the ancients, and to the kinds of Coltsfoot) I have thought good to name in English, Horse-Foot, for that the leaves exceed Coltsfoot in bigness, yet are like them in shape: and of this plant Clusius (whom I here chiefly follow) hath described two sorts: the first of these hath many leaves almost like unto those of Coltsfoot, but larger, very round, and snipped about the edges, of a light green colour above, and hoary undemeath, having also many veins or nerves running up and down them; and these leaves are of an ungrateful taste, and grow upon long purplish crested stalks: The stem is some two cubits high, crested likewise, and of a purplish colour, set also at certain spaces with leaves very like unto the other, but lesser than those next the ground, and more cornered and sharper pointed; the tops of the stalks and branches carry bunches of purple flowers, as in an umbel: and commonly in each bunch there are three little flowers consisting of four leaves apiece, and a forked pistil, and these are of a purple colour, and a weak, but not unpleasant smell, and they at length turn into down, amongst which lies hid a longish seed: the root, if old, sends forth divers heads, as also store of long whitish fibres.

            2. The leaves of this are more thin, tough and hard, and of a deeper green on the upper sides, neither are they whitish below, nor come so round or close whereas they are fastened to their stalks (which are not crested as those of the other, but round and smooth); they are also full of veins, and nicked about the edges, and of somewhat an ungrateful hot and bitter taste. The stalks are also smoother, and the flowers of a lighter colour.

The Place.

            Both these grow in the Austrian and Styrian Alps under the sides of woods, among bushes and such shadowy places: but not in England, that I have yet heard of.

The Time.

            I find it not set down when these flower and seed, but judge it about the same time that Coltsfoot doth.

The Names.

            This by Clusius, Lobel, and others, hath been called Cacalia, and referred to that described by Dioscorides, lib. 4, cap. 123, which is thought to be that set forth by Galen by the name of Cancanus. In the Historia Lugdunensis pag. 1052, the latter of these two here described is figured by the name of Tussilago alpina sive montana, and the former is there pag. 1308, by the name of Cacalia, but the flowers are not rightly expressed: and if my judgement fail me not, the figure which is in the seventeenth page of the Appendix of the same author by the title of Aconitum pardalianches primum, is of no other than this very plant. But because I have not as yet seen the plant, I will not positively affirm it: but refer this my opinion to those that are judicious and curious, to know the plant that raised such controversy between Matthiolus and Gesner, and whereof neither Camerarius nor Bauhin, who have set forth Matthiolus his commentaries, have given us any certain or probable knowledge.

The Temperature and virtues, out of the ancients.

            A. The root of Cacalia is void of any biting quality, and moderately dries, and it is of a gross and emplastic substance; wherefore steeped in wine and so taken it helps the cough, the roughness of the artery or hoarseness, like as Tragacanth: neither if you chew it and swallow down the juice doth it less avail against those effects than the juice of Liquorice.