MEDICINAL PLANTS in Folk Tradition

(Darren Dugan) #1

very markedly so and particularly characteristic of southern Wales (Brec-
knockshire, Glamorgan and Carmarthenshire^5 ) though reported also from
Oxfordshire,^6 Norfolk^7 and the Highlands.^8 Peculiar to Sempervivum as well
is its employment for cancerous growths, a use for which the only records
traced are from two of the Eastern Counties, Essex^9 and Cambridgeshire.^10
These exceptions apart, both plants have been valued in the main for
soothing and healing soreness of the skin, whatever its cause, and as a treat-
ment for various kinds of eruptions on it. The leaf might be applied as a poul-
tice or reduced to a form in which it could be mixed with cream or fat and
turned into an ointment. In both it has been corns, warts, burns and chil-
blains that have received this attention most frequently; but when the records
for those uses are compared geographically, the surprising
fact emerges that Sempervivum and Umbilicus are
almost exactly mirror images of one
another: the eleven counties in
which Umbilicus has been em-
ployed for burns, for instance, are
almost an entirely different set
from the nine in which that use has
been recorded forSempervivum.While this lends
support to the idea that the two functioned as
stand-ins for one another, the pattern exhibited by
that standing-in has evidently been extremely
complex. In only two cases are the distributions neat
and suggestive. The records of the use ofUmbili-
cus for corns—the single commonest affliction
for which that plant features (19 records out of
80)—are mostly from the northern half of
Wales^11 and the rest from the south-
eastern corner of Ireland (Wicklow,^12
We x f o r d ,^13 Carlow,^14 Cork^15 ). And
similarly,Umbilicus is on record for
chilblains in four south-eastern Irish
counties (Tipperary,^16 Carlow,^17
We x f o r d ,^18 Wicklow^19 ), the two
Welsh counties (Pembroke-
shire,^20 Cardiganshire^21 ) fac-
ing the second two of those,


136 Umbilicus andSempervivum


Sempervivum tectorum,
house-leek (Green 1902, fig. 218)

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