Bur-reed.
Sparganium.
A COMMON water plant, with leaves like flags, and rough heads of seeds: It is two or three feet high. The stalks are round, green, thick, and upright. The leaves are very long and narrow, sharp at the edges, and with a sharp ridge on the back along the middle; they are of a pale green, and look fresh and beautiful. The flowers are inconsiderable and yellowish: they stand in a kind of circular tufts about the upper parts of the stalk: lower down stand the rough fruits called burs, from whence the plant obtained its name; they are of the bigness of a large nut meg, green and rough. The root is composed of a quantity of while fibres.
The unripe fruit is used: they are astringent, and good against fluxes of the belly, and bleedings of all kinds: the best way of giving them is infused in a rough red wine, with a little cinnamon. They use them in some parts of England externally for wounds. A strong decoction of then is made to wash old ulcers, and the juice is applied to fresh hurts, and they say with great success.
