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CHAPTER 14 Bedstraws, Valerian and Scabious

Dicotyledonous flowering plants in the orders (and families) Rubiales (Rubi-
aceae, bedstraws) and Dipsacales (Caprifoliaceae, honeysuckles; Valeri-
anaceae, valerians; Dipsacaceae, teasels) are included in this chapter.

Rubiaceae

Galium odoratum (Linnaeus) Scopoli
Asperula odorata Linnaeus
woodruff
Europe, Siberia, North Africa; introduced into North America
Bruising the fresh leaves ofGalium odoratum and applying them to wounds
and cuts was a very common practice of country people in seventeenth-
century England^1 and was recorded in use in Norfolk as late as 1911.^2 Other-
wise woodruff seems to have featured in folk medicine only as a tea made
from the dried leaves and drunk for feverish colds and lung infections—and
only in the Highlands, where that function was reflected in its name in
Gaelic.^3

Galium palustre Linnaeus, in the broad sense
marsh bedstraw
Europe, western Asia, North Africa, North America
A plant of muddy streams known as gairgean (or geirgein) in either South
Uist or Eriskay of the Outer Hebrides, of which a preparation has been
applied there externally for dropsy, has been identified as Galium palustre.^4