Gentians and Nightshades 195seems sharply at variance with a lingering
reputation in the Outer Hebrides^13 for also
staunching haemorrhages; but the plant
was recommended as a wound healer by
Classical writers, and a large quantity of its
charred remains has been excavated from a
Roman army hospital on the Rhine.^14
Irish departures from service as a tonic are
fewer by comparison. Louth^15 completes a pre-
dominantly Irish Sea focus of centaury’s use for
indigestion, ‘Ulster’^16 has known it as a cough
remedy, while in Wicklow^17 it has been rated
excellent for the liver (perhaps the biliousness
for which it has been valued by the Manx, in
whose language it had a name translating as
‘jaundice herb’^18 ).
Gentianella campestris (Linnaeus)
Boerner
field gentian
northern and western Europe
Just as centaury stood in for ‘gentian’ (nor-
mally the eastern European species Gen-
tiana lutea Linnaeus) in British Isles folk
medicine, so in areas where centaury is
absent the most widespread of the native
Gentianella species,G. campestris,which tol-
erates colder climates, stood in for that in turn,
its properties being very similar. Thus in
Orkney, where it is common, it had a three-
fold value as a tonic, a remedy for gravel
and a cure for jaundice,^19 while in Shet-
land it was used for digestive com-
plaints.^20 Up in the Pennines bordering
Cumbria, where centaury does not pen-
etrate above the valleys, field gentian has
similarly served as a digestive as well as
being drunk ‘to kill germs’.^21 Centaurium erythraea,
centaury (Fuchs 1543, fig. 217)