case have been drawing on local folk usage (they recommended it for fevers,
abdominal complaints, profuse menstruation and festering swellings); it is
impossible to be sure, however, that it was this species they understood by this
name. Indeed, paucity of the records for folk uses ofA. arvensis and the
absence of any focus in these on one ailment above all others hardly give the
impression of a herb that was particularly highly valued. Two of the records
are for an application for which numerous other species have been rated as
effective and might equally well have served, namely the healing of warts
(Somerset,^259 Sussex^260 ). The plant is known to have a powerful diuretic
property, and perhaps it was for that that an infusion of the plant was drunk
as an ‘alterative’ (as determined by a medical practitioner) by cottagers in
early nineteenth-century Devon.^261 Someone more recently found to be
using this plant in Devon, however, was doing so to soothe stings and against
sore eyes.^262 Possibly it came into its own more particularly as a counter-irri-
tant, like nettles: in Glamorgan it was once a remedy for the bites of dogs and
snakes, applied to the wound with a cloth.^263 In keeping with this general
elusiveness, the one source which claims it as much prized in the Highlands
fails to mention for what it was used there.^264
Ireland has yielded very few records, by contrast. They add one further
ailment for which this plant has been used: chronic or muscular rheuma-
tism, in ‘some places’ in Ulster (?).^265 They also provide the sole certain evi-
dence of advantage being taken of the diuretic property mentioned above, for
in Sligo an infusion has been drunk for kidney trouble.^266
Samolus valerandi Linnaeus
brookweed
cosmopolitan
Even had it not been a relatively uncommon species and mostly maritime, a
combination of factors likely to have deterred herbal use, the extreme bitter-
ness ofSamolus valerandi would probably have repelled would-be exploiters,
too. Not surprisingly, the sole folk use of it traced was as an external applica-
tion, for eye troubles. The user in question, an Englishman living in Wales,
knew the plant by the name kenningwort (from the ulcers popularly termed
kennings) and had earned a reputation for achieving remarkable cures with
it.^267 As ‘kenning herb’ was one of the names borne by greater celandine (Che-
lidonium majus) in Cornwall,^268 advertising that plant’s similar function
there, it would be tempting to postulate a misidentification did not the record
stand on the authority of someone known to have been a competent field
128 Anagallis arvensis