¶ The Description.
1 BRooke-lime or Brooklem hath fat thicke stalkes, round, and parted into diuers bran∣ches: the leaues be thicke, smooth, broad, and of a deepe greene colour. The floures grow vpon small tender foot-stalkes, which thrust forth of the bosome of the leaues, of a perfect blew colour, not vnlike to the floures of land Pimpernell: the root is white, low creeping, with fine strings fastned thereto: out of the root spring many other stalkes, whereby it greatly en∣creaseth.
‡ There is a lesser varietie of this, which our Author set forth in the fourth place, differing not from this but onely in that it is lesse in all the parts thereof; wherefore I haue omitted the hi∣storie and figure, to make roome for more conspicuous differences. ‡
2 The great water Pimpernell is like vnto the precedent, sauing that this plant hath sharper pointed or larger leaues, and the floures are of a more whitish or a paler blew colour, wherein 〈◊〉〈◊〉 the difference.
‡ There is also a lesser varietie of this, whose figure and description our Authour gaue in the next place; but because the difference is in nothing but the magnitude I haue made bold to omit it also.
3 Now that I haue briefely giuen you the history of the foure formerly described by our Au∣thor, I will acquaint you with two or three more plants which may fitly be here inserted: The first of these Lobel calls Anagallis aquatica tertia; and therefore I haue thought fit to giue you it in the same place here. It hath a white and fibrous root; from which ariseth a round smooth stalke a foot and more high, (yet I haue sometimes found it not aboue three or foure inches high:) vpon the stalkes grow leaues round, greene, and shining, standing not by couples, but one aboue ano∣ther on all sides of the stalkes. The leaues that 〈◊〉〈◊〉 on the ground are longer than the rest, and are in shape somewhat like those of the common Daisie, but that they are not snipped about the ed∣ges: the floures are white, consisting of one leafe diuided into fiue parts; and they grow at the first as it were in an vmbel, but afterwards more spike fashioned. It floures in Iune and Iuly, and grow∣eth in many waterie places, as in the marishes of Dartford in Kent, also betweene Sandwich and Sandowne castle, and in the ditches on this side Sandwich. 〈◊〉〈◊〉 saith, That Guillandinus called it sometimes Alisma, and otherwhiles Cochlearia: and others would haue it to be Samolum of Pliny, lib. 25. cap. 11. Baubine himselfe fitly calls it Anagallis aquatica folio rot undo non crenato.