COMPOSITE FAMILY 



BONESET THOROUGHWORT 



Eupatorium perfolidtum 



Perennial. Native. In low, moist, or fairly wet places, 

 along streams, in the tangles of roadside thickets, bearing 

 in late summer clusters of dull white composite flowers. 

 From New Brunswick to Manitoba, south to Florida and 

 Texas. Leaves and flowers, properly gathered and dried, 

 still have a value in the drug market. July-September. 



Stem. — Large, hairy, two to four feet high, branching 

 at the top. 



Leaves. — Opposite, broad-lanceolate, united at the base 

 around the stem and tapering to a slender point, rounded- 

 serrate, very veiny and wrinkled, downy beneath, five 

 to eight inches long; color a gray-green. 



Flower-heads. — Discoid-composite, each head of ten to 

 twenty tubular florets, each little group containing five 

 to ten heads. The large cluster more or less flat-topped, 

 greenish white. Involucre long, bell-shaped, its bracts 

 lanceolate, downy, in two or three series, the outer shorter. 

 The tubular florets white; anthers dark purple, and pro- 

 truding styles white. Pappus abundant. 



In Mrs. Stowe's "Old Town Folks," Miss Sa- 

 phronia divides all wild plants into two classes: "Blows 

 that are good to dry and blows that are not." Bone- 

 set was one of the blows good to dry. In fact, the dried 

 flowering stems of Boneset long made part of the 

 early domestic materia medica of New England and 

 the Middle States. It is said to have been a remedy 

 whose value was learned from the Indians. 



The plant is readily distinguished by its round, 

 hairy stalk, but especially by its opposite leaves whose 

 bases so unite and grow together that they appear 

 like one long continuous leaf with the stalk passing 



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