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  • Hypericum perforatum (St John's wort)
  • A plant, possibly an Hypericum species: flowering stem. Watercolour.
  • Hypericum olympicum L. Clusiaceae. Mount Olympus St John's wort. Deciduous perennial herb. Distribution Greece, Asia minor. This is not the plant used for mood disturbances in herbal medicine which is Hypericum perforatum. However, all the 370 species of Hypericum are called 'St John's Wort' so a potential for confusion exists. It shares some of the chemicals thought to be active in Hypericum perforatum. Photographed in the Medicinal Garden of the Royal College of Physicians, London.
  • Marsh St. John's wort (Hypericum eloides): flowering stems. Colour nature print by H. Bradbury.
  • Five British wild flowers, all types of St. John's wort (Hypericum species). Coloured lithograph, c. 1846, after H. Humphreys.
  • St. John's wort (Hypericum olympicum): entire flowering plant with separate floral segments and seed. Coloured etching by M. Bouchard, 177-.
  • St. John's wort or tutsan (Hypericum androsaemum L.): flowering and fruiting stems, fruit and seeds. Coloured etching by M. Bouchard, 177-.
  • St. John's wort or klamath weed (Hypericum perforatum L.): flowering stem with separate root, flower and seed. Coloured etching by M. Bouchard, 177-.
  • Origanum dictamnus L. Lamiaceae Dittany of Crete, Hop marjoram. Distribution: Crete. Culpeper (1650) writes: ‘... hastens travail [labour] in women, provokes the Terms [menstruation] . See the Leaves.’ Under 'Leaves' he writes: ‘Dictamny, or Dittany of Creet, ... brings away dead children, hastens womens travail, brings away the afterbirth, the very smell of it drives away venomous beasts, so deadly an enemy is it to poison, it’s an admirable remedy against wounds and Gunshot, wounds made with poisoned weapons, draws out splinters, broken bones etc. They say the goats and deers in Creet, being wounded with arrows, eat this herb, which makes the arrows fall out of themselves.' Dioscorides’ Materia Medica (c. 100 AD, trans. Beck, 2005), Pliny the Elder’s Natural History and Theophrastus’s Enquiry into Plants all have this information, as does Vergil’s Aeneid where he recounts how Venus produced it when her son, Aeneas, had received a deadly wound from an arrow, which fell out on its own when the wound was washed with it (Jashemski, 1999). Dioscorides attributes the same property to ‘Tragium’ or ‘Tragion’ which is probably Hypericum hircinum (a St. John’s Wort): ‘Tragium grows in Crete only ... the leaves and the seed and the tear, being laid on with wine doe draw out arrow heads and splinteres and all things fastened within ... They say also that ye wild goats having been shot, and then feeding upon this herb doe cast out ye arrows.’ . It has hairy leaves, in common with many 'vulnaries', and its alleged ability to heal probably has its origin in the ability of platelets to coagulate more easily on the hairs (in the same way that cotton wool is applied to a shaving cut to hasten clotting). Photographed in the Medicinal Garden of the Royal College of Physicians, London.
  • Seven British garden plants, including a fig: flowering stems and floral segments. Coloured etching, c. 1833.
  • Twelve British wild flowers with their common names. Coloured engraving, c. 1861, after J. Sowerby.