Cleavers

It is also called Aperine, Goose-shade, Goose-grass, and Cleavers.

Descript : The common Cleavers have divers very rough square stalks, not so big as the top of a point, but rising up to be two or three yards high sometimes, if it meet with any tall bushes or trees whereon it may climb, yet without any claspers, or else much lower, and lying on the ground, full of joints, and at every one of them shoots forth a branch, besides the leaves thereat, which are usually six, set in a round compass like a star, or a rowel of a spur. From between the leaves or the joints towards the tops of the branches, come forth very small white flowers, at every end, upon small thready foot-stalks, which after they have fallen, there do shew two small round and rough seeds joined together which, when they are ripe, grow hard and whitish, having a little hole on the side, something like unto a navel. Both stalks, leaves, and seeds are so rough, that they will cleave to any thing that will touch them. The root is small and thready, spreading much to the ground, but dies every year.

Place : It grows by the hedge and ditchsides in many places of this land, and is so troublesome an inhabitant in gardens, that it ramps upon, and is ready to choak whatever grows near it.

Time : It flowers in June or July, and the seed is ripe and falls again in the end of July or August, from whence it springs up again, and not from the old roots.

Government and virtues : It is under the dominion of the Moon. The juice of the herb and the seed together taken in wine, helps those bitten with an adder, by preserving the heart from the venom. It is familiarly taken in broth to keep them lean and lank, that are apt to grow fat. The distilled water drank twice a day, helps the yellow jaundice, and the decoction of the herb, in experience, is found to do the same, and stays lasks and bloody-fluxes. The juice of the leaves, or they a little bruised, and applied to any bleeding wounds, stays the bleeding. The juice also is very good to close up the lips of green wounds, and the powder of the dried herb strewed thereupon doth the same, and likewise helps old ulcers. Being boiled in hog's grease, it helps all sorts of hard swellings or kernels in the throat, being anointed therewith. The juice dropped into the ears, takes away the pain of them.

It is a good remedy in the Spring, eaten (being first chopped small, and boiled well) in water-gruel, to cleanse the blood, and strengthen the liver, thereby to keep the body in health, and fitting it for that change of season that is coming.