Life Everlasting (Pearl-Flowered)
Botanical: Antennaria Margaritaceum
Family: N.O. Compositae
---Synonyms---American Everlasting. Cudweed.
---Parts Used---Leaves, flowers, stalks.
---Habitat---North America, Kamschatka and in English gardens. Grows wild in Essex, near Bocking, and in Wales. Cultivated in Whin's Cottage garden by the writer.
---Medicinal Action and Uses---Anodyne, astringent, pectoral, useful in diarrhoea, dysentery, pulmonary affections, as a poultice for sprains, bruises, boils, painful swellings. Said to produce sleep. When hops have failed, applied externally to the head, a decoction of the flowers and stalks used in America as a fomentation for pained and bruised limbs, and for bronchitis.
Leaves linear, lanceolate, acuminate; alternate stalk branched at top; corymbs fastigiate; root perennial, creeping, spreading, becoming almost a troublesome weed; stalks very downy, and white flowering branches form a flat broad bunch, each branch with numerous crowded heads, on short branched downy peduncles, the middle ones sessile; calyx scales bluntly ovate and white, but not downy, flowers July to September. Easily propagated by creeping roots. The plant is slightly fragrant.
See:
CATSFOOT
CUDWEED
GNAPHALIUM
WHITE BALSAM.
