FEVERFEW 275 



grow so freely that it becomes a troublesome weed 

 to the farmer, but, transferred to our rock-garden, a 

 good clump of it in free flower-bearing well deserves 

 warm welcome. It is a very near relative to the 

 ox-eye, a plant that we have already referred to, 

 and which, year by year, throws up its effective 

 gold and white flower-heads amidst our other 

 blooms. 



The feverfew is another of the composites that 

 we must find space for, its clustering heads of daisy- 

 like flowers being very attractive. It is closely 

 allied to the camomile, and a garden variety of it 

 may often be found in cultivation, the " golden 

 feather." Tusser, we see, commends it to the good 

 housewife, but calls it the fetherfew, thereby missing 

 the whole point of the name. It was called fever- 

 few from its monkish name, febrifuga, the idea 

 being that, owing to its valuable medicinal proper- 

 ties, fever would be driven away when the patient 

 was dosed with it. It possesses considerable tonic 

 and stimulant power, though its use is now a thing 

 of the past. The feverfew is fairly common on 

 waste ground, but it may be regarded as in many 

 cases an escape, a descendant from an ancestor 

 held in esteem in the herb-garden. 



Some of the old herbals commend the feverfew 

 as "an especiall remedy against opium that is taken 

 too liberally " ; a curious revelation this of mediaeval 

 habits, as we, most of us probably, have been in 



