Beautiful Flowering Shrubs 



profusion of golden flowers, which grow in clusters at 

 the tips of the branches. Each flower is about the size 

 of a shilling, and carries a ring of many stamens and 

 a seed-case with three stylar columns, not five, as 

 in the previous species. 



The fruit is a pill-like capsule, successively green, 

 bright red and dark purple. Crushed when ripening, a 

 blood-red juice exudes, hence the shrub's second name, 

 Andros&mum Le. a man's blood (from the Greek). 

 This tendency to colour lies also in the juices of the 

 leaves, which are apt to tinge redly in the autumn, and 

 hence, in consonance with the Doctrine of Signatures, 

 so firmly held by our ancestors, it is not surprising to 

 read in Culpepper that '* Tustan, or Park Leaves, is 

 an herb of Saturn and a most noble anti-venerean,' 

 purging choleric humours, staying the bleeding of 

 wounds, healing burning by fire, all because of its 

 " signature " of redness. And he emphasises, " It hath 

 been accounted, and certainly it is, a sovereign herb to 

 heal either wound or sore, either outwardly or inwardly, 

 and therefore always used in drinks, lotions, green 

 wounds, ulcers, or old sores, in all balms, oils, oint- 

 ments, or any other sorts of which the continual ex- 

 perience of former ages hath confirmed the use thereof 

 to be admirably good, though it be not so much in use 

 now as when physicians and surgeons were so wise as 

 to use herbs more than now they do." This last re- 



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