White Mullien.
Verbascum album.
A tall and stately wild plant, singular for its white leaves, and long spike of yellow flowers; and frequent on our ditch banks, and on dry places. It grows six feet high; the leaves rising from the root, are a foot long, as broad as ones hand, sharp-pointed, serrated about the edges, and covered with a white downy or woolly matter. The stalk is thick, firm, and very upright, and is covered with smaller leaves of the same kind: the flowers are yellow and large: they stand in spikes, of two feet long, three or four only opening at a time; the seeds are small and brown, the root is long and shaggy.
The leaves are used, and those are best which grow from the root, when there is no stalk. They are to be given in decoction against the overflowings of the menses, the bloody flux, the bleeding of the piles, and spitting of blood; boiled in milk, they are also excellent by way of pultice to the piles, and other painful swellings.
