The Universal Herbal: Galium Boreale; Cross-leaved Ladies' Bedstraw.

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.
1824Leaves in fours, lanceolate, three-nerved, smooth, upright; root perennial, long, slender, dark purple; stems a foot or eighteen inches in height, obscurely quadrangular, stout, much branching at the top, the lower part smooth, the upper slightly hairy; flowers copious, in a terminating panicle, formed of racemes or corymbs, growing gradually smaller; corolla white, with ovate segments; styles two; fruit covered with long, soft, whitish hairs, slightly incurved upwards. This is one of the species, the roots of which afford a beautiful red dye. The process is thus described by Haller. The roots are gathered in spring, they are ground with malt-dust, and infused in small beer, which then constitutes the dye in which the macerated woollen yarn is boiled, after having been previously dyed yellow in a decoction of birch leaves. — It flowers in July and August, and is a native of Lapland, Sweden, Siiesia, Switzerland, Carniola, and various parts of the British isłes. It is found in the mountains of Westmore land and Wales; near Pooley bridge, by Ullswater; and near the ferry at Winandermere in Cumberland; in some parts of the county of Durham; and on the rocks near the sides of many lakes and rivers in Scotland.