Description. This hath many green stalks, two or three feet high, rising from a tough, long, white root, which dieth not every year, set round about at the joints with small and somewhat long, well smelling leaves, set three together unevenly dented about the edge. The flowers are yellow, and well-smelling also, made like another trefoil, but small, standing in long spikes one above another, of an hand breadth long or better, which afterwards turn into long crooked pods, wherein is contained flat seed, somewhat brown.
Place. It groweth plentifully in many places of this land, as in the edge of Suffolk, and in Essex, as also in Huntingdonshire, and in other placss, but most usually in corn-fields, and in corners of meadows.
Time. It flowereth in June and July, and is ripe quickly after.
Government and virtues. Mellilot, boiled in wine and applied, molifieth all hard tumours and inflammations that happen in the eyes, or other parts of the body, as the fundament, or privy parts of men and women; and sometimes the yolk of a roasted egg, or fine flour, or poppy seed, or endive, is added unto it. It helpeth the spreading ulcers in the head, it being washed with a lee made thereof. It helpeth the pains of the stomach being applied fresh; or boiled with any of the aforenamed things; also, the pains of the ears, being dropped into them; and steeped in vinegar, or rose water, it mitigateth the head ach. The flowers of mellilot and camomile are much used to be put together in clysters to expel wind, and ease pains; and also in poultices for the same purposes, and to assuage swelling tumours in the spleen or other parts, and helpeth inflammations in any parts of the body. The juice dropped into the eyes, is a singular good medicine to take away the film or skin that cloudeth or dimmeth the eye-sight. The head often washed with the distilled water of the herb and flower, or a lee made therewith, is effectual for those that suddenly lose their senses; as also to strengthen the memory, to comfort the head and brain, and to preserve them from pain, and the apoplexy.