The Universal Herbal: Galium Mollugo; Great 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 eights, ovate-linear, subserrate, spreading very much, mucronate; stem flaccid; branches spreading. The whole plant is smooth to the touch; root perennial, creeping; stem two, three, and four feet high, and even more, generally depressed, unless supported by the weight of the branches, quadrangular, thickest just above the joints; flowering branches very much extended, sustaining abundance of white flowers, the four segments of which are lanceolate and pointed; they rise from the whorls of leaves, generally two long and two short ones from each whorl, forming in the whole a panicle. There are several varieties. — It is common in hedges and bushy places, flowering from June to August. It is called wild madder, and great bastard madder. The roots yield a red dye like the true madder, and of a brighter colour: it is also remarkable, that the animals feeding on this plant, as well as those feeding on madder, have their bones dyed red. It has been observed on the Malvern hills.