Wall Flowers, or Winter Gilliflowers

The garden kind are so well known that they need no description.

Descript : The common single Wall-flowers, which grow wild abroad, have sundry small, long, narrow, dark green leaves, set without order upon small round, whitish, woody stalks, which bear at the tops divers single yellow flowers one above another, every one bearing four leaves a-piece, and of a very sweet scent: after which come long pods, containing a reddish seed. The roots are white, hard and thready.

Place : It grows upon church walls, and old walls of many houses, and other stone walls in divers places. The other sort in gardens only.

Time : All the single kinds do flower many times in the end of Autumn; and if the Winter be mild, all the Winter long, but especially in the months of February, March, and April, and until the heat of the spring do spend them. But the double kinds continue not flowering in that manner all the year long, although they flower very early sometimes, and in some places very late.

Government and virtues : The Moon rules them. Galen, in his seventh book of simple medicines, saith, That the yellow Wall-flowers work more powerfully than any of the other kinds, and are therefore of more use in physic. It cleanses the blood, and fretteth the liver and reins from obstructions, provokes women's courses, expels the secundine, and the dead child; helps the hardness and pain of the mother, and of spleen also; stays inflammations and swellings, comforts and strengthens any weak part, or out of joint; helps to cleanse the eyes from mistiness or films upon them, and to cleanse the filthy ulcers in the mouth, or any other part, and is a singular remedy for the gout, and all aches and pains in the joints and sinews. A conserve made of the flowers, is used for a remedy both for the apoplexy and palsy.