The Cotton Tree.
Botanical name:
Gossypium sive xylon.
A SMALL shrub, with brittle and numerous branches, and yellow flowers: it does not grow more than four feet high; the leaves are large, and divided each into five parts; and of a dusky green colour. The flowers are large and beautiful, they are of the bell-fashioned kind, as broad as a half crown, deep, of a yellow colour, and with a purple bottom; the seed-vessels are large, and of a roundish figure, and they contain the cotton with the seeds among it. When ripe, they burst open into three or four parts.
The seeds are used in medicine, but not so much as they deserve; they are excellent in coughs and all disorders of the breast and lungs; they cause expectoration, and are very balsamic and astringent.
