Darnel

It is called Jam and Wray: in Sussex they call it Crop, it being a pestilent enemy among corn.

Descript : This has all the winter long, sundry long, flat, and rough leaves, which, when the stalk rises, which is slender and jointed, are narrower, but rough still; on the top grows a long spike, composed of many heads set one above another, containing two or three husks, with a sharp but short beard of awns at the end; the seed is easily shaken out of the ear, the husk itself being somewhat rough.

Place : The country husbandmen do know this too well to grow among their corn, or in the borders and pathways of the other fields that are fallow.

Government and virtues : It is a malicious part of sullen Saturn. As it is not without some vices, so hath it also many virtues. The meal of Darnel is very good to stay gangrenes, and other such like fretting and eating cankers, and putrid sores. It also cleanses the skin of all leprosies, morphews, ringworms, and the like, if it be used with salt and raddish roots. And being used with quick brimstone and vinegar, it dissolves knots, and kernels, and breaks those that are hard to be dissolved, being boiled in wine with pigeon's dung and Linseed. A decoction thereof made with water and honey, and the places bathed therewith, is profitable for the sciatica. Darnel meal applied in a poultice draws forth splinters and broken bones in the flesh. The red Darnel, boiled in red wine and taken, stays the lask and all other fluxes, and women's bloody issues; and restrains urine that passes away too suddenly.