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.

[ 1] THE great sowen Beane hath a square stalke, vpright, and hollowe. The leaues growe vpon short stemmes standing vpon both sides of the stalkes one against another, and are long & thicke. The flowers grow vpon the sides of the stalke, and are white with a great blacke spot in them and somtimes a browne. After which flowers there come vp long coddes, great and round, soft within, & frised, or cottonlike. In the sayd coddes the beanes are inclosed, of colour most commonly white, sometimes redde or browne, in fashion flat, almost lyke to the nayle of a mans finger or toe.

[ 2] The lesser beane that is vsed to be sowen, is like to the aforesayd, in stalkes, leaues, flowers, and woolly coddes, sauing that in all pointes it is lesser. The fruite also is nothing so flat, but rounder and smaller.

[ 3] The wilde beane hath also a square holow stalke, as the garden and sowen beanes haue. The leaues be also like to the common beane leaues, but the litle stemmes, whereon the leaues do growe, haue at the very ende tendrelles and claspers, as the pease leaues haue. The flowers be purple. The coddes are flat,

and woolly within, as it were laid with a soft Downe or Cotton, but nothing so much as the coddes of the common sowen beanes. The fruite is all rounde and very blacke and no bigger then a good pease, of a strong vnpleasant sauor, and when it is chewed, it filleth the mouth full of stinking matter.