Ivy and Umbellifers 181Inone application alone, and that a minor one, does Ireland seem to have
been overtaken by Britain: the procuring of an infusion from the leaves as a
lotion for sore eyes. Records of this have been traced only from Limerick,^38 but
in Britain it is known from as far apart as Hampshire,^39 Suffolk^40 and Fife.^41
Finally, there is a use of particular interest of which only a solitary record
has come to light: a preparation of the leaves drunk as an abortifacient. This
was a practice well known at one time to women in a village in (?) Wiltshire.^42
Apiaceae
Hydrocotyle vulgaris Linnaeus
marsh pennywort
Europe, North Africa
(Identification uncertain) Hydrocotyle vulgaris seems the likeliest identity of
the plant whose ‘penny leaves that are got in the bog’ were rated by two Lim-
erick informants as excellent for dressing a burn.^43 Bog pondweed (Pota-
mogeton natans), however, must also be considered a possibility.
Sanicula europaea Linnaeus
sanicle
Europe, southern, central and eastern Asia, Africa
An ancient panacea,Sanicula europaea was praised so highly in the old
herbals that its folk use cannot escape suspicion of being wholly derived from
the written tradition. John Parkinson in his Theatrum of 1640 says the coun-
try folk applied an ointment made from it to their hands ‘when they are chapt
by the winde’, but the uses recorded in the more recent folk literature mostly
reflect the haemostatic property claimed for the plant. It seems to have
enjoyed a particularly wide vogue in the Highlands^44 for healing infected
wounds (as well as ulcers^45 ), while the curing of haemorrhages and dysentery
(as well as bruises and fractures) has been claimed for it in the Isle of Man.^46
In Ireland, similarly, it has been valued for bleeding piles in parts of Lon-
donderry.^47 In Donegal, however, the authority on that county’s flora found
it much prized as a treatment for consumption.^48
Eryngium maritimum Linnaeus
sea-holly
coasts of temperate Europe; introduced into North America
The name eryngo, by which herbalists mainly understood Eryngium cam-
pestre Linnaeus, a species of mainland Europe very rare in Britain, was shared