Triticum

Couch grass, Agropyron repens, is a weed widely diffused throughout Europe, Northern Asia, the Caspian region, North and South America, even to Patagonia and Terra del Fuega. The ancients were naturally familiar with this grass with a creeping root-stalk, but it is impossible to determine the species valued by them. Dioscorides (194) ascribes to the decoction a value in calculus and suppression of urine. This use of triticum is corroborated by Pliny (514), and again occurs in the writings of Oribasius (479a) of the third century. Practically all the mediaeval herbals figure the plant as in Dodonaeus (195). As a domestic remedy triticum has ever been in common use, and is still, in the form of a decoction, much employed in mucous discharges from the bladder and in other affections of the urinary organs.

The History of the Vegetable Drugs of the U.S.P., 1911, was written by John Uri Lloyd.