Ague Root

Ague root is a perennial herb of eastern North America, found through most of the eastern United States and reported from southern Ontario, where it favours damp ground that is peaty, sandy or gravelly. It spreads by underground rhizomes and forms a star-shaped rosette of narrow, yellowish-green leaves, from which a single slender stalk rises as high as a metre, bearing small white flowers shaped like urns and dusted on the outside with a mealy bloom. Several Native American peoples, among them the Catawba and Cherokee, used it as medicine, and settlers in Appalachia took it up after them; in the nineteenth century it entered the United States Pharmacopeia. Grieve describes the dried rhizome as intensely bitter and valued as a tonic for the stomach. Its names have long been tangled with those of false unicorn root, Chamaelirium luteum, so that 'true' and 'false' were attached to each plant at different times. In magic it is a herb of protection: it is scattered around a home to keep evil away or carried in a sachet, it is used in hex-breaking and uncrossing work, and it is called on for banishing, psychic abilities and success.