Daisies 303apparently never featured in the British Isles as a folk cure),Chamaemelum
nobile has a strongly south-western distribution in both Britain and Ireland
in so far as it appears to be a native. It has a secondary area of frequency in
Ulster but is absent from Scotland
and most of northern England ex-
cept where introduced. Though suf-
ficiently abundant in part of that
native range to have met medicinal
demand locally—William Borlase
reported it in eighteenth-century
Cornwall as ‘transplanted into gar-
dens, for a strengthening emetic
tea’^284 —extensive folk use in many
other areas implies that its source
was largely or wholly cottage gar-
dens, at any rate in later centuries.
In other words, this can have been a
wild herb only to a relatively limited
extent, and latterly it may even have
become a semi-commercial one.
The greatest number of folk uses
recorded for the plants are as a relax-
ant: for soothing the stomach (Dev-
on,^285 Wiltshire,^286 Essex,^287 Glou-
cestershire,^288 Nottinghamshire,^289
the Highlands^290 ); easing nervous
pains in the head, teeth or ears (Wilt-
shire,^291 Essex,^292 Warwickshire,^293
Norfolk^294 )orperiod pains (Dor-
set^295 )orthose accompanying pleu-
risy (Hertfordshire^296 ); and induc-
ing sleep or preventing nightmares
(Norfolk^297 ).
A secondary focus has been on
colds, coughs of all kinds and sore
throats. The treatment of these has
usually taken the form of drinking
a hot infusion of the flowers or
Chamaemelum nobile, chamomile
(Bock 1556, p. 56)