The Universal Herbal: Arundo Phragmites; Common Reed.

The Universal Herbal;
or botanical, medical and agricultural dictonary.
Containing an account of All the known Plants in the World, arranged according to the Linnean system. Specifying the uses to which they are or may be applied, whether as food, as medicine, or in the arts and manufactures.
With the best methods of propagation, and the most recent agricultural improvements.
collected from indisputable Authorities.
Adapted to the use of the farmer - the gardener - the husbandman - the botanist - the florist - and country housekeepers in general.
By Thomas Green.
Vol. I
Liverpool.
Printed at the Caxton Press by Henri Fisher.
Printer in Ordinary to His Majesty.
1824
Calices five flowered: panicle loose. - It flowers from July till September, and ripens its seeds in October and November. It is very common by the sides of rivers, in ditches, and large Standing waters. In autumn, when the leaves begin to fall, and the stems are changed brown, it is cut for making screens in kitchen-gardens, and for many other uses, as thatching, for which it is more durable than straw for ceilings, and inlay across the frame of wood-work, as the foundation for plaister floors. The panicles are used by the country people in Sweden, to dye wool green, and the root has been recommended as answering the same purposes, as Dog's grass, or triticum canianum. According to Hill, the juice of the fresh root excites the menstrual discharge powerfully, but not violently: it likewise inereases, the urinary evacuation, and, is serviceable in stranguries and the gravel.