A pitch is a significant underground vertical space in mining terminology. The name is thought to have originated through the description of deep shafts which had bottoms that could not be easily seen as being "pitch-black".
The term has been adopted by cavers to refer to a drop (of anything above trivial size) in a cave. (It is usually only applied to a drop that has to be descended; a vertical space that has to be ascended is known as an aven). The deepest pitch so far discovered underground is 643 m in Vrtoglavica cave, Slovenia.
Climbers also apply the term to a section of a (generally, above-ground, in a modification of its original meaning) climb between two belays. See climbing system.
The stem-leaves are placed alternately and have at their base two stipules (leaf-like members that in many plants occur at the junction of the base of the leaf with the stem).
The flowers, which are in bloom all the summer and autumn, often as late as December, are less conspicuous than the round fruitheads, which succeed them, which are formed of a mass of dark crimson achenes, each terminating in an awn, the end of which is curved into a hook.
In modern herbal medicine Avens is considered useful in diarrhoea, dysenteries, leucorrhoea, sore throat, ague, chills, freshcatarrh, intermittent fevers, chronic and passive haemorrhages, gastric irritation and headache.
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