Daphne laureola Linnaeus
spurge-laurel, wood-laurel
western and southern Europe, Asia Minor, North Africa, Azores;
introduced into North America, New Zealand
Described by William Withering as ‘a brisk and rather severe purgative’,^79
Daphne laureola finds a mention in Chaucer as a cottage garden laxative and
what is probably a Lincolnshire use in that capacity is mentioned under D.
mezereum,preceding. In the West Riding of Yorkshire ‘the poor people’ in
the eighteenth century employed D.laureola as a vomit.^80 In Herefordshire,
on the other hand, it was mixed with mistletoe and given for epilepsy.^81 No
records have been found of any seemingly true folk uses, however, of the pur-
poses for which the druggists are said to have most valued it, namely as a
horse medicine and as a cure for venereal disease and both benign and malig-
nant cancers. The herb collectors, who often sold it as ‘mezereon’,^82 are
described as scouring woods in Berkshire^83 and Sussex^84 for its roots in the
first half of the nineteenth century and greatly reducing its large populations
there as a result. While that shows that it existed as a wild plant in England in
sufficient abundance locally to have constituted a potential member of the
unwritten herbal tradition (unlike D.mezereum), the available evidence
makes it look more likely that its use was wholly a product of the learned
works and their followers.
Onagraceae
Epilobium Linnaeus
willowherb
temperate zones
(Name ambiguity suspected) The Rev. Hilderic Friend^85 records having heard
‘the small Epilobium’—whatever species he understood by that—called ‘eye-
bright’ in Somerset. That could imply that it has substituted for Euphrasia
officinalis as an eyewash; alternatively, it may have been merely an erroneous
transfer of the vernacular name.
Circaea lutetiana Linnaeus
enchanter’s-nightshade
Europe, western and central Asia, North Africa, North America
Though Circaea lutetiana features in the Anglo-Saxon herbals as a plant of
semi-magical potency, its sole use in British folk medicine appears to have
been in the Highlands (where it could have been C.×intermedia Ehrhart, its
Legumes, Spurges and Geraniums 165