248 OUR ROCK-GARDEN 



foliage is, we must be rather chary of admitting. 

 When one gets a rather dark, damp corner of one's 

 rock-garden thickly clothed with its foliage the 

 effect is very charming, but when the long and 

 freely creeping root-stocks begin to encroach outside 

 this they are exceedingly difficult either to keep in 

 order or to extirpate. It is, in short, quite possible 

 to have too much of a good thing. " The roote 

 runneth and creepeth like Quick in the ground, 

 some occupying a great deale of roome. It groweth 

 by hedges and wall-sides, and often times in gardens 

 also, if it be not rid and weeded out." The plant 

 was long cultivated for medicinal purposes, and it is 

 probably not truly indigenous. Even to-day, when 

 its medical utility is a thing of the past, it is still 

 almost exclusively about houses and gardens that it 

 may be met with. "Goutwort had not his name 

 given as it seemeth at randome, but upon good 

 experience to helpe the cold Goute and Sciatica, as 

 also joynt aches and other cold griefes." The root 

 was the part employed, and as St. Gerard was 

 invoked by the gouty in their distress another old 

 name of the plant is the herb Gerard. The leaves 

 are in some parts of the Continent eaten as a 

 vegetable, and especially in the Spring. 



Such names as goutweed, wormwood, pilewort, 

 sneezewort, all-heal, woundwort, indicate clearly the 

 reputed virtues of these various plants, while fever- 

 few, heartsease, eyebright, and the old monkish 



