The natural world offered Renaissance men and women an abundance of raw materials which could be used to protect and to heal. Healers and wise women used particularly potent plants, gemstones and animal parts, in conjunction with magical ritual and Christian prayer, as preventative and cure. Pertaining largely to an oral and unlettered culture, much of this natural lore has been lost. Fortunately, the Renaissance demand for vernacular translations of classical works brought about a revived interest in botany, whilst cheap print and a wider reading public fostered the proliferation of a new genre of self-help manuals and books of secrets, and it is within these works that some of the oral traditions have been captured in ink. Whilst it may be true that many of the new authors of the Renaissance used print to disparage and demystify many of these popular beliefs, it is often only through the disapproving lens of the vernacular manual that we are able to catch glimpses of folk beliefs in practice. This paper will examine one such tradition: the use of the Rose of Jericho as birthing aid.