(From a scale; from its use in cleansing the skin from scales). Piperitis, raphanus sylvestris, iberis, Dionysius, poor man's pepper, pepper wort, dittander, lepidium latifolium Lin. Sp. Pl. 899, is a plant with undivided leaves, small white flowers on the tops of the stalks, followed by heart shaped pods; perennial, growing wild on the sides of rivers and shady places: it flowers in June and July. The whole plant is pungent like pepper.

Lepidium Arabis. See Draba. Lepidium gramineo folio, Iberis cardamantica, agriocardimum. Sciatica cresses; lepidium iberis Lin. Sp. Pl. 900. This species hath long narrow leaves; the lower of which are on long pedicles and serrated; the upper entire, without pedicles; annual, and raised in our gardens for culinary use.

All these plants, when fresh gathered, have a quick, penetrating, pungent taste, though almost dissipated in drying; it is retained in the expressed juice; extracted by water and by spirit; and rises with both in distillation. In external applications they have been used against the sciatica; internally in intermittents, chronic rheumatism, and palsy.

Lepidium monspelliacum. See Plumbago. Lepidocarpodendron, (from scale,

fruit, and a tree, because its calyx is scaly). All the species are natives of the Cape of Good Hope, near Table Mountain, and arranged by Linnaeus under the genus leucandron; but neither seems entitled to attention in a medicinal view; so that we need not distinguish them more minutely.