CHAPTER 2 Introduction to the Compendium of Uses
The compendium in the following chapters lists all the folk medical uses
traced for plants growing wild in Britain, Ireland or the Isle of Man. Some
domestic uses, such as in pest control and cosmetics, are also included. Vet-
erinary uses are the subject of a more concise list in the Appendix. Though
fungi have been shown to be more animal than vegetable, and lichens as part-
fungi share that character in some measure, they have traditionally been
regarded as plants, for which reason it seemed appropriate to include them.
Excluded from coverage are (i) the Channel Islands, which though part of
the British Isles in the strict geographical sense have inherited very different,
essentially French folk traditions, (ii) all uses identified with Romany or other
more recent immigrant peoples with folk herbal traditions based on floras
substantially or wholly different from those of Britain and Ireland, and (iii)
all uses of plants not accepted as indigenous to those two islands or not estab-
lished in them in the wild in sufficient enduring quantity to have been capa-
ble of serving as genuinely folk herbs (which thus excludes a high proportion
of plants that feature in medieval and early modern herbals).
Geographical Areas
As far as the evidence permits, records are cited in terms of counties, the
smallest administrative unit to which the greatest number of records can be
tied. As far as Britain is concerned, though, the counties for the purposes of
Medicinal Plants in Folk Tradition: An Ethnobotany of Britain & Ireland are the
ones that preceded the radical changes that accompanied the local govern-