WILD, OR NATIVE FLOWERS. 83 



Rattlesnake Root — Nabalus albus, (Hook.) 



This tall stately-growing plant belongs to the same Natural Order 

 as the Lettuce, and like it abounds in a bitter milky juice, which 

 pervades the leaves and stem and thick spindle-shaped root, even to the 

 pedicels of the graceful nodding pendent flowers. 



The plant applied both externally and internally has long had the 

 reputation of being an antidote for the bite of the Rattlesnake. 



The slender ligulate corollas which surround the cinnamon- 

 coloured pappus, are beautifully striped with purple and creamy 

 white ; the pointed tips are turned backwards in the full-blown flowers 

 displaying the stamens and pistils, and soft woolly pappus. The clustered 

 flowers on slender foot-stalks, droop very gracefully at intervals on the 

 stem, which with the branchlets have a purplish tinge. 



In the variety Serpenia?-ia, this colour pervades the whole plant to 

 a greater degree, and the leaves are more deeply divided than in the type. 



In damp rich woods we often find a slender delicate species, which 

 is commonly called 



Lion's-foot — Nabalus alfissimus, (Hook.) 



The plant is from two to three feet high; leaves light green, thin, 

 coarsely toothed and widely lobed. The strap-shaped flowers, narrow, 

 pointed and revolute ; the scales are of a pale green, the pappus of a 

 beautiful fawn colour. The elegant yellow drooping flowers in clusters, 

 making this forest plant a very attractive object from its graceful habit 



The above plant was pointed (jut to me as the true Lion's-foot, by 

 an old Yankee settler, and I have retained the name, though it does 

 not quite correspond with Gray's plant, so called. Gray's Lion's-foot is 

 also known as Gall of the Earth, from the intense bitterness of its root ; 

 possibly all these bitter milky juiced plants are narcotics, but as yet 

 not recognized unless by the unlearned Indian, or old herbalist of 

 some remote backwoods settlement, where doctors and druggists were 

 unknown, and the herbs of the field the only medicaments ; generally 

 administered by an old woman, famed more for her herb decoctions and 

 plasters than for her wisdom in book-learning, who believed that there 

 was a salve for every sore, and a potion for every ailment under the 

 sun if the folk had but faith to believe in her " Yarbs." 



Thorough-Worts. 



There is a popular belief among many of our native Herbalists, that 

 for every disease that man is subject to, God in His mercy has provided 



