Antennaria Margaritaceum. Pearl Flowered Life Everlasting.

Nat. Ord.— Composite or Asteraceae. Sex. Syst.— Syngenesia Superflua.

The Leaves.

Description. — Antennaria Margaritaceum is a perennial plant, with a simple, erect stem, corymbosely branched above ; the leaves are linear-lanceolate, acute, three-veined, sessile, and beneath the stem woolly ; corymbs many-flowered, fastigiate ; scales of the hemispheric involucre elliptic, obtuse, opake, pearl-white, the outer ones only tomentose at the base. Heads dioecious ; the pistillate flowers very slender ; pappus simple, bristly, capillary in the fertile flowers, and in the sterile clubshaped or barbellate at the summit. Corolla yellowish.

History. — The name Antennaria is from the resemblance of the sterile pappus to the antenna? of many insects. The plant is slightly fragrant, and grows in dry hills and woods in various parts of the United States ; it is from one to two feet in hight, and bears yellow and white flowers in July. The leaves are the parts used.

Properties and Uses. — Anodyne, astringent and pectoral. A decoction has proved beneficial in diarrhea and dysentery, and in pulmonary affections. Used externally as a cataplasm in painful tumors, contusions and sprains, and is certainly very efficacious in relieving pain and disposing to sleep, often succeeding where the hop poultice has proved ineffectual. The A. Plantagineum, and A. Dioicum, or white plantain, are supposed to be beneficial in snake-bites.

The American Eclectic Dispensatory, 1854, was written by John King, M. D.