200 Calystegia soldanella
Convolvulaceae
Calystegia soldanella (Linnaeus) R. Brown
sea bindweed
coasts of west and southern Europe, Asia, North Africa, North and
South America, Australasia
On the coasts of Sussex,^65 Hampshire^66 and the Isle of Wight,^67 Calystegia
soldanella was known as scurvy-grass and either supplemented or stood in for
Cochlearia officinalis in countering that once-common ailment. According to
another author, ‘the inhabitants of our coasts’ (which from the context
appears to refer to those of Norfolk) used to gather the young shoots and
pickle these for employment as a gentle purge.^68
Calystegia sepium (Linnaeus) R. Brown
hedge bindweed
Europe, western Asia, North Africa, North America, Australasia
The acrid roots ofCalystegia sepiumare much more violently purgative than
those ofC. soldanella,but despite their drastic action their use for that pur-
pose in parts of the British Isles was for long not wholly displaced in remoter
areas by its preferred relation, scammony (C. scammoniaLinnaeus), imported
from the Levant. In Northamptonshire ‘the poor people’ were still boiling the
roots in ale as a purge as late as the 1830s.^69 However, the failure of folklore
collectors to pick up mentions of that use of the plant and that it featured in
herbals back to Dioscorides suggest that it originated in the written tradition.
There are nevertheless two records that seem likely to have had more
spontaneous sources. One is as a wart cure in Leicestershire,^70 the other as a
remedy for kidney trouble in Fermanagh—if it is indeed the plant known
locally in the latter county as ‘the tormentor’ (‘because it spreads its grip and
chokes the plant’).^71 In either case the species in question could equally well
be the field bindweed,Convolvulus arvensis Linnaeus, which is known to be
powerfully purgative, too, while the Fermanagh record might also belong to
black-bindweed,Fallopia convolvulus (Linnaeus) A. Löve.
Cuscutaceae
Cuscuta europaea Linnaeus
greater dodder
Europe, western Asia, North Africa; introduced into North America,
New Zealand
(Misinterpreted statement) A statement by Matthias de l’Obel,^72 that he had