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 first kinde of Cistus whiche beareth no Ladanum, hath rounde rough or hearishe stalkes, and stemmes with knobbed ioyntes, and full of branches. The leaues be coundishe and couered with a cotton or soft heare, not muche vnlyke the leaues of Sage, but shorter and rounder. The flowers grow at the top of the stalkes, of the fashion of a single Rose, whereof the male kinde is of colour red, and the femall white, at the last they change into knoppes or huskes in whiche the seede is conteyned.

Wheras Cistus groweth naturally of his owne kind, ther is foūd a certaine excrescence or outgrowing about y^e roote of this plant, which is of colour som∣times yellow, sometimes white, and sometimes greene: out of the whiche is a certaine iuyce taken out by art, y^t which they vse in shops, & is called Hypocistis.

[ 2] The second kind of Cistus, which is also called Ledon, is a plant of a wood∣dy substance, growing like a litle tree or shrubbe, with soft leaues, in figure not muche vnlyke the others, but longer and browner.

Vpon this plante is found a certayne fatnesse, wherof they make Ladanum the whiche about midsomer, and in the hoatest dayes, is found growing vpon the newe leaues of this Cistus, the whiche newe leaues (after that the seede with the old leaues are fallen of) do first bud foorth and spring in sommer. The sayde fat or grease is not onely taken from the beardes and feete of Goates, or Goate buckes whiche feede vpon the leaues and branches of this plante (as

[illustration]

Cistus non ladanifera.

[illustration]

Cistus cum Hypocistide.

Dioscorides and the Auncientes do write) but also it is gathered & taken with thinges fit for that purpose, deuised by the industrie & diligence of man, as some of the learned writers of our time do report, especially y^e learned Peter Belon the which hath much haunted and trauayled the Ilande of Crete or Candie.