Edin. TUSSILAGO; FOLIA, FLORES, Dub. Coltsfoot leaves and flowers.

Syn. Tussilage; Pasd'Ane (F.), Huflattisch (G.), Hoefblad (Dutch), Tassi-lagem (Port.), Dwoje lisknik (Russ.), Farfara (I.), Una de cabello (S.).

Coltsfoot is an indigenous perennial plant, growing in moist, marley, and clayey soils. It flowers in March and April, and the leaves appear in May and June. The root is long and diffusely creeping, and sends up stems or scapes destitute of leaves, erect, five or six inches high, simple, uni-floral, tomentose, with sparse, smooth, scale-like bractes of a brownish-pink colour, lying close to the stem. The flower droops before it blows, but afterwards becomes erect, and is of a golden-yellow colour: the calyx is composed of linear, trinerved, plane, smooth, purplish scales, the length of the disc, equal, uniform, and finely reflex; the flowrets of the ray are numerous, spreading, linear, twice the length of those of the disc, with a more slender stigma: the seeds are smooth, more frequently abortive, particularly in the disc; with the seed-down sessile, rough, white, and shining; the receptacle is pitted, flat at first, but finally convex. The leaves appear and the fibrous part separated from the pulp. The farinaceous pulp is then thrown into a fresh quantity of water, and stirred until it becomes milky, when the fluid is passed through a sieve, and left at rest until the fecula is deposited.

The supernatant fluid is now poured off, and the starch, after being well washed, is dried in the sun. In, this state it is brought to Europe, and sold under the name of Indian arrow-root after the flower, are radical, petiolate, erect, cordate, angled and toothed; smooth, green above with reddish veins, but underneath white and woolly.

Dioscoridis. The name is derived from tussis, whence tussilago; showing the early opinion of the pectoral virtues of this plant.

The leaves are more frequently employed than the flowers, and should be gathered and dried when they are fully expanded, before they have attained their greatest magnitude.

Qualities. - The dried leaves are inodorous, and have a rough, mucilaginous taste. The mucus they contain is yielded to water by coction, and evolves by the boiling a peculiar odour.

Medical properties and uses.-Tussilago is demulcent, and has been regarded as expectorant from the earliest ages, having been smoked through a reed in the days of Dioscorides, with a view of relieving the chest from accumulated mucus in catarrh, asthma, and phthisis. It is still used as a demulcent in catarrhal and phthisical affections; but very little reliance is placed on its powers.1 Cullen thought he perceived good effects result from the use of the expressed juice of the recent leaves in scrofula; but his observations have not been generally confirmed.2

The decoction of the leaves is the usual form of exhibiting tussilago. A handful of the leaves is boiled in O ij. of water to Oj.; and the decoction after being strained is sweetened with sugar-candy or syrup. The dose is a teacupful.