Plantains, Figworts, Foxglove and Speedwells 263Lentibulariaceae
Pinguicula vulgaris Linnaeus
common butterwort, bog violet
Europe, northern Asia, Morocco, North America
Repeatedly referred to in the literature, from the eighteenth century onwards,
as a folk medicine in use for cattle, the butter-like juice ofPinguicula vulgaris
had its uses for human afflictions as well. According to John Parkinson, ‘the
country people that live where it groweth’ applied it to hands chapped by the
wind (‘felons’), while in Wales the poorer sorts of people made it not only
into a syrup with which to purge themselves and their children, but also
mixed it with butter to produce an ointment rated excellent for obstructions
of the liver.^244 Similarly there is a nineteenth-century record, apparently from
Kent,^245 of the use of the juice for skin irritations caused by the wind, also of
the crushed leaves as a village remedy for bruises. More recently still, an infu-
sion has been drunk in the uplands of Westmoreland in the belief that this
helps to procure a smoother skin.^246 Unexpectedly, though this is a wide-
spread plant of bogs, it does not seem to have featured as a folk medicine, at
any rate for people, in either Ireland or Scotland.
Notes
- McNeill
- Moore 1898
- Sargent
- Tongue
- Shaw, 49
- Britten & Holland
- Lafont
- Lafont
- Tait
- Lafont
- Evans 1940
- Palmer 1994, 122
- McNeill
- Goodrich-Freer, 205
- Spence; Leask, 75
- Lafont
- Vickery MSS
- Tongue
- Pratt 1850–7
- Vickery MSS
- Randell, 87
- Beith
- Williams MS
- Vickery 1995
- IFC S 226: 484
- IFC S 133: 94
- IFC S 550: 274; 572: 90
- Goodrich-Freer, 205
- IFC S 932: 240, 312
- IFC S 132: 97
- IFC S 837: 128
- IFC S 932: 217
- IFC S 498: 383
- IFC S 572: 90
- IFC S 1043: 269
- IFC S 837: 122
- IFC S 550: 274
- IFC S 932: 311