Except in this passage I can only find Speargrass mentioned in Lupton's "Notable Things," and there without any description, only as part of a medical recipe: "Whosoever is tormented with sciatica or the hip gout, let them take an herb called Speargrass, and stamp it and lay a little thereof upon the grief." The plant is not mentioned by Lyte, Gerard, Parkinson, or the other old herbalists, and so it is somewhat of a puzzle. Steevens quotes from an old play, "Victories of Henry the Fifth": "Every day I went into the field, I would take a straw and thrust it into my nose, and make my nose bleed;" but a straw was never called Speargrass. Asparagus was called Speerage, and the young shoots might have been used for the purpose, but I have never heard of such a use; Ranunculus flammula was called Spearwort, from its lanceolate leaves, and so (according to Cockayne) was Carex acuta, still called Spiesgrass in German. Mr. Beisly suggests the Yarrow or Millfoil; and we know from several authorities (Lyte, Hollybush, Gerard, Phillip, Cole, Skinner, and Lindley) that the Yarrow was called Nosebleed; but there seems no reason to suppose that it was ever called Speargrass, or could have been called a Grass at all, though the term Grass was often used in the most general way. Dr. Prior suggests the Common Reed, which is probable. I have been rather inclined to suppose it to be one of the Horse-tails (Equiseta).[278:1] They are very sharp and spearlike, and their rough surfaces would soon draw blood; and as a decoction of Horse-tail was a remedy for stopping bleeding of the nose, I have thought it very probable that such a supposed virtue could only have arisen when remedies were sought for on the principle of "similia similibus curantur;" so that a plant, which in one form produced nose-bleeding, would, when otherwise administered, be the natural remedy. But I now think that all these suggested plants must give way in favour of the common Couch-grass (Triticum repens). In the eastern counties, this is still called Speargrass; and the sharp underground stolons might easily draw blood, when the nose is tickled with them. The old emigrants from the eastern counties took the name with them to America, but applied it to a Poa (Webster's "Dictionary," s.v. Speargrass).

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