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The Plant type carries 112 debated or debunked facts of 957 total, eleven point seven percent, against an atlas wide baseline under one percent. Read plant by plant, most of that is not many arguments. It is one argument, from one seventeenth century book, said fifty one times.

One Herbalist, Fifty One Plants

Fifty one of the type's 135 live plants, from Rosemary to Rose, Chamomile to Basil, carry the byte identical debunked note, attributed to Culpeper's Complete Herbal: "the doctrine of signatures holds that the form, colour or habit of a plant declares its use." The claim is recorded as a dated origin period on each plant, and the dating is what the note debunks, not the herb's use itself.

Fifty One Plants, Not Fifty One Traditions

What changes from plant to plant is the name. The argument against reading an ancient signature into a plant's appearance is written once and carried, unchanged, to every sibling plant Culpeper's own book covers, from common kitchen herbs to hedgerow weeds. Grouped here with the Frequencies, Gemstone and Seven Ray essays, at a larger scale than any of the three: fifty one plants, not forty nine or nine.

A Different, Genuinely Diverse Handful

Beyond the fifty one, a further handful of the type's plants carry entirely separate, genuinely distinct debates that this essay does not attempt: whether Ephedra, Fly Agaric, Syrian Rue or Cannabis is the true identity of the Vedic Soma or the Zoroastrian Haoma, whether an ergot contamination explains the Salem panic, and whether a modern ceremonial use of Kava or of Sage is a fair continuation of an older practice. Each of those is its own question, and none of them is this one.

Where To Read More

• RosemaryHerbsRosemary, one of fifty one plants carrying the identical debunked Culpeper origin note word for word
• MarigoldFlowersMarigold, one of fifty one plants carrying the identical debunked Culpeper origin note word for word
• ChamomileFlowersChamomile, one of fifty one plants carrying the identical debunked Culpeper origin note word for word
• St Johns WortHerbsSt Johns Wort, one of fifty one plants carrying the identical debunked Culpeper origin note word for word
• LavenderFlowersLavender, one of fifty one plants carrying the identical debunked Culpeper origin note word for word
• BasilHerbsBasil, one of fifty one plants carrying the identical debunked Culpeper origin note word for word
• ThymeHerbsThyme, one of fifty one plants carrying the identical debunked Culpeper origin note word for word
• RoseFlowersRose, one of fifty one plants carrying the identical debunked Culpeper origin note word for word
• ParsleyHerbsParsley, one of fifty one plants carrying the identical debunked Culpeper origin note word for word