Erythronium americanum

COMMON NAMES. Dog-Tooth Violet, Serpent's Tongue, etc.

MEDICINAL PARTS. The bulb and leaves.

Description.--This is a perennial plant, springing from a bulb at some distance below the surface. The bulb is white internally and fawncolored externally. The leaves are two, lanceolate, pale green, with purplish or brownish spots, and one nearly twice as wide as the other. It bears a single drooping yellow flower, which partially closes at night and on cloudy days. Fruit a capsule.

History.--This beautiful little plant is among the earliest of our spring flowers, and is found in rich open grounds, or in thin woods throughout the United States, flowering in April or May. The leaves are more active than the roots; both impart their virtues to water.

Properties and Uses.--It is emetic, emollient, and antiscorbutic when fresh; nutritive when dried. The fresh root simmered in milk, or the fresh leaves bruised and often applied as a poultice to scrofulous tumors or ulcers, together with a free internal use of an infusion of them, is highly useful as a remedy for scrofula. The expressed juice of the plant, infused in cider, is very beneficial in dropsy, and for relieving hiccough, vomiting, and hematemesis, and bleeding from the lower bowels.