It growes four and five foot high.
Coleworts, or kale, the common western dish, was the Saxon physic. In
the east it is so little esteemed that the poor people will not eate
it.
About Malmesbury "ros solis", which the strong-water men there doe
distill, and make good quantitys of it. In the woods about the Devises
growes Solomon's-seale; also goates-rue (gallega); as also that
admirable plant, lilly-convally. Mr. Meverell says the flowers of the
lilly-convally about Mosco are little white flowers.-(Goat's-rue:- I
suspect this to be a mistake; for I never yet heard that goat's-rue
was found by any man growing wild in England.-J. RAY.)
The middle part of Wilts.- Naked-boys (q. if not wild saffron) about
Stocton. (Naked-boys is, I suppose, meadow saffron, or colchicum, for
I doe not remember ever to have seen any other sort of saffron
growing wild in England. - J. RAY.)
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The watered meadows all along from Marleborough to Hungerford,
Ramesbury, and Littlecot, at the later end of Aprill, are yellow with
butter flowers. When you come to Twyford the floted meadowes there are
all white with little flowers, which I believe are ladysmocks
(cardamine): quaere of some herbalist the right name of that plant.
(Ranunculus aquaticus folio integro et multum diviso, C. Bankini.-
J. RAY.) The graziers told me that the yellow meadowes are by much the
better, and those white flowers are produc't by a cold hungry water.
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