Rocket

In regard the Garden Rocket is rather used as a sallad herb than to any physical purposes, I shall omit it, and only speak of the common wild Rocket. The description whereof take as follows.

Descript : The common wild Rocket has longer and narrower leaves, much more divided into slender cuts and jags on both sides the middle rib than the garden kinds have; of a sad green colour, from among which rise up divers stalks two or three feet high, sometimes set with the like leaves, but smaller and smaller upwards, branched from the middle into divers stiff stalks, bearing sundry yellow flowers on them, made of four leaves a-piece, as the others are, which afterwards yield them small reddish seed, in small long pods, of a more bitter and hot biting taste than the garden kinds, as the leaves are also.

Place : It is found wild in divers places of this land.

Time : It flowers about June or July, and the seed is ripe in August.

Government and virtues : The wild Rockets are forbidden to be used alone, in regard their sharpness fumes into the head, causing aches and pains therein, and are less hurtful to hot and choleric persons, for fear of inflaming their blood, and therefore for such we may say a little doth but a little harm, for angry Mars rules them, and he sometimes will be restive when he meets with fools. The wild Rocket is more strong and effectual to increase sperm and venerous qualities, whereunto all the seed is more effectual than the garden kind. It serves also to help digestion, and provokes urine exceedingly. The seed is used to cure the biting of serpents, the scorpion, and the shrew mouse, and other poisons, and expels worms, and other noisome creatures that breed in the belly. The herb boiled or stewed, and some sugar put thereto, helps the cough in children, being taken often. The seed also taken in drink, takes away the ill scent of the arm-pits, increases milk in nurses, and wastes the spleen. The seed mixed with honey, and used on the face, cleanses the skin from morphew, and used with vinegar, takes away freckles and redness in the face, or other parts; and with the gall of an ox, it mends foul scars, black and blue spots, and the marks of the small-pox.