Edith Sherwood Ph.D.

The Voynich Botanical Plants

Folio 87vright Back to Plant List
folio 87vright

Folio 87vright. Lousewort (Pedicularis flammea). This plant grows mainly in cool or temperate climates of the Northern Hemisphere. Linnaeus gave the plant the Latin word for louse as its generic name, due to the belief in medieval times that livestock grazing on the plant got infected with lice, which they passed on to humans. Culpepper believed that “lousewort is accounted profitable to heal fistalas and hollow ulcers and to stay the flux of humours in them as also the abundance of courses and any other fluxes of blood being boiled in port wine and drunk.” (4) (C)

(4) Grieve, M, A Modern Herbal, Dover Publishers, New York
(C) Plants drawn from nature