nevertheless suggestive that the numerous records for that are all from the
‘Celtic fringe’ and that it has been used in Ireland for other ailments as well:
for burns in Waterford,^68 shingles in Tipperary^69 and erysipelas in Limer-
ick.^70 Greatly confusing the picture, however, was the extensive publicity for
its use produced by two papers in the Edinburgh Monthly Medical Journal in
1852–3 (‘On the treatment of Tape-worm by the Male Shield Fern’), which
brought to notice a more reliable method of exploiting the plant—by soak-
ing the fresh rhizomes in ether—and thereafter gave it respectability in offi-
cial medical circles.^71 The powerful anthelminthic properties attributed to
the rhizomes certainly have a well-attested clinical basis but their use is
regarded today as dangerous.
BLECHNACEAE
Blechnum spicant (Linnaeus) Roth
hard-fern
Europe, Japan, western North America
Despite the distinctiveness of its fronds,Blechnum spicant has been encoun-
tered only once in the folk use records—and that as merely one of eight ingre-
dients in a juice drunk for a cough after a fever in Mayo.^72 Though employed
by midwives in the Faeroe Islands in the eighteenth century to staunch bleed-
ing in childbirth,^73 it would appear not to have found favour in the British
Isles, at least in more recent times, as a specific.
Conifers
Conifers are seed plants but, unlike in the true flowering plants, the seeds are
borne on cones rather than in fruits. Conifers included here are pines,
junipers and yews, of the families Pinaceae, Cupressaceae and Taxaceae,
respectively.
PINACEAE
Pinus sylvestris Linnaeus
Scots pine
Europe, temperate Asia; introduced into North America and
New Zealand
Reduced now to a few fragments from its one-time prevalence in the Scottish
Highlands, the native populations of the tree Pinus sylvestris cannot have
64 Dryopteris filix-mas