A nievve herball, or historie of plantes wherin is contayned the vvhole discourse and perfect description of all sortes of herbes and plantes: their diuers [and] sundry kindes: their straunge figures, fashions, and shapes: their names, natures, operations, and vertues: and that not onely of those whiche are here growyng in this our countrie of Englande, but of all others also of forrayne realmes, commonly vsed in physicke. First set foorth in the Doutche or Almaigne tongue, by that learned D. Rembert Dodoens, physition to the Emperour: and nowe first translated out of French into English, by Henry Lyte Esquyer.

❀ The Description.

HErmodactil hath great brode leaues lyke the Lilly, three or foure comming foorth of one roote, amongst which groweth the stalke about the heyght of a foote, bearing triangled huskes lyke to the Marsh flague or false Acorus, but alway smaller, the which being rype do open them selues into three partes: within that is inclo∣sed a rounde seede, blacke, and harde. The flowers growe vp after the leaues and stalke are perished, vpō short stemmes or stalkes, lyke the flowers of Saf∣fron. The roote is round, broade aboue, and narrow beneath, white & sweete, couered with many coates or felmes, hauing by one syde right in the midle as it were a clift or parting, where as the stalke bearing the flowre groweth. The roote being dryed becommeth blacke.

There is also to be seene in Shoppes litle white rounde rootes, the whiche they call Hermodactils in fashion partly lyke the aforesayde, but that they be more flatte, and haue no diuision in the middle, as the abouesayde, but what flowers and leaues they haue, Mesue hath not left vs in writing.