Daisies 301made from the flowers and leaves was once a popular drink in Orkney, but
apparently purely as a refreshment.^254 The sole medicinal records consist of
boiling the juice for stomach trouble in the Highlands^255 and employing the
plant as a specific for ‘wild fire’ (allegedly urticaria in this case) in one district
in Donegal.^256
Achillea millefolium Linnaeus
yarrow
Europe, western Asia; introduced into North America,
Australasia
Long and very widely known—in many parts of the world—for its haemo-
static properties,Achillea millefolium has been primarily valued for altering
blood flow in a variety of beneficial ways.
Of the total of 125 records traced of the
use of yarrow in British or Irish folk
medicine, 47, or rather more than a
third, come broadly into that cat-
egory. The greatest number of
these (16) are for staunching
bleeding from wounds, cuts,
scratches or sores, usually by
means of an ointment but sometimes by
merely applying the fresh leaves as a poul-
tice. Familiar to the Romans and doubtless
for millennia before them, this func-
tion of the plant is reflected in the
names it bears in Welsh and Gaelic
as well as such English ones as ‘sol-
diers’ woundwort’ and ‘carpenter’s
grass’. These names imply a once
more general use than that limited
number of records suggests. Other, more
specialised applications of this property of
the plant are for stopping nosebleeds (10
records, more particularly Welsh and Scottish and
noticeably non-Irish), reducing high blood pressure
(Gloucestershire,^257 Carmarthenshire^258 ),
for uterine haemorrhaging (Devon^259 ) and
cramp (Somerset—solved there by wearing
Achillea millefolium, yarrow
(Green 1902, fig. 320)