Eyebright

Eyebright is a small annual native to Europe, western Siberia, Turkey and the Transcaucasus, from a couple of inches to about ten inches tall, with deeply toothed leaves and white to lilac flowers striped with purple and marked with a yellow patch on the lower lip. It is a partial parasite: above ground it looks like any green plant, but its roots tap those of the grasses around it, which is why it will hardly grow in a garden. Its genus is named after Euphrosyne, the Grace of joy and mirth, perhaps for the gladness it was thought to bring to failing eyes; another story credits the linnet with first using the leaf to clear its young ones' sight. Grieve suspects the belief came from the doctrine of signatures, the purple and yellow streaks recalling bloodshot, diseased eyes. From the fourteenth century it was prized as an eye remedy, Elizabethan England drank eyebright ale, and Milton has the archangel Michael clear Adam's sight with it and rue. Kynes records that the Irish thought it beyond the reach of anything natural or supernatural and used it against fairy stroke and the evil eye, that in the late Middle Ages it was believed to give second sight, and that in Scotland a sprig in the pocket made people tell the truth. Cunningham drinks it as a tea to clear the mind and help the memory.