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CHAPTER 5 Water-lilies, Buttercups and Poppies

Dicotyledonous flowering plants in the orders (and families) Nymphaeales
(Nymphaeaceae, water-lilies), Ranunculales (Ranunculaceae, buttercups;
Berberidaceae, barberries) and Papaverales (Papaveraceae, poppies; Fumari-
aceae, fumitories) are included in this chapter.

Nymphaeaceae

Nymphaea alba Linnaeus
white water-lily
Europe; introduced into Australasia

Nuphar luteum (Linnaeus) Smith
yellow water-lily
Europe, northern Asia, North Africa, subspecies or allied species in
North America; introduced into New Zealand
The Scots Gaelic name duilleaga-bhàite,‘drowned leaf ’, is ascribed in dictio-
naries^1 to water-lilies, but the healing herb bearing that name on the Inner
Hebridean island of Colonsay, when sent to a botanist for identification, was
found to be bog pondweed,Potamogeton polygonifolius.^2 Although the sim-
ilar name in Irish Gaelic, applied to plants used for a cure in Waterford,^3 has
also been assumed to refer to water-lilies, such familiar plants would surely
not have had to be described to informants in Limerick as a ‘green leaf that
grows on the top of water in the bog’,^4 a description that fits bog pondweed
better than anything else, even though the ‘green leaf ’ in question was a corn