Ve ronica officinalis Linnaeus
heath speedwell
Europe, Asia Minor, Azores, Australia (?), eastern North America;
introduced into New Zealand
John Gerard in his Herball^197 described and figured Ve ronica officinalis as the
herb long esteemed in Wales for great healing virtues under the name
‘fluellen’. That identification may or may not have been correct, but he imme-
diately confused matters by extending that name to the two British species of
Kickxia (to which it has mainly been applied in books since) and to other
members of the genus Ve ronica as well. If he had been correct, one would
expect numerous Welsh folk uses of this species to have persisted in the folk
records down to recent times. However, only a single mention of any speed-
well valued there medicinally has been met with: as a cure for piles and
impetigo, in some unstated part of the country and without indication of
the species.^198
Although Ve ronica officinalis,as the specific name implies, was the speed-
well focused on by official medicine as the possessor of a range of healing
properties (and its folk use in Romania for treating stomach ulcers appears to
have had its efficacy confirmed as well founded by experiments^199 ), it fea-
tures too rarely in the Scottish and Irish folk records—and seemingly not at
all in those for England—to be accepted as a wholly convincing member of
the unwritten tradition in the British Isles, as opposed to being a late requi-
sition from book-based lore. That a tea made from this species has been
drunk for gouty and rheumatic complaints in Angus^200 is suspiciously simi-
lar to a recommendation that appears in books. It is hard to believe that it was
really the plant intended by Martin Martin as betonica Pauli (a name for V.
officinalis in the herbals) which he reported accompanied goldenrod and St
John’s-wort in an ointment made in Skye for treating fractures,^201 for such a
use seems at odds with the other claimed virtues of this species.
The Irish evidence is only a little better. That the plant has been employed
for colds in one district of Donegal stands safely on the authority of an expe-
rienced botanist^202 ; in the adjoining county of Londonderry, however,
another botanist found the country people mistook germander speedwell
for this species, using that for asthma and lung complaints.^203 Another Irish
source claims Ve ronica species in general have been used in (unspecified)
parts of the country for coughs from chest troubles of all kinds^204 —and V.
officinalis is the one which in Germany has enjoyed a reputation for pul-
monary tuberculosis. But that it was once used in Ireland by nursing moth-
258 Ve ronica officinalis