Legumes, Spurges and Geraniums 173Polygalaceae
Polygala vulgaris Linnaeus
common milkwort
Europe, western Asia, North Africa; introduced into North America,
Australasia
Polygala serpyllifolia Hose
heath milkwort
western and central Europe; introduced into North America,
New Zealand
(Folk credentials questionable) Hopefully identified as the ‘polygala’ (much
milk) of Classical authors,Polygala serpyllifolia and P. vulgaris were in con-
sequence so particularly commended in the medieval herbals to nursing
mothers for promoting the flow of milk after childbirth that their presence in
the unwritten tradition seems doubtful at best. The near-absence of ostensi-
bly folk records of that use is indeed suspicious, the sole one, from Norfolk,^143
being of a relatively recent date. Though it has been suggested that a herb
used in the Isle of Man which bore a name translating as nipplewort^144 may
have been P. serpyllifolia or P. vulgaris (both widespread there), that identifi-
cation is by no means certain. It is true that species ofPolygala have been
known in the vernacular as ‘milkwort’ in the north of England and the Bor-
ders,^145 but that name could have been taken from the herbals; it is not nec-
essarily evidence of a one-time widespread use for that same purpose quite
independent of learned medicine. It is further suspicious that a herb valued
for the ability of its ‘milk’ to cure warts, which must surely be spurge (Euphor-
bia), has also borne that name in parts of England, particularly the Eastern
Counties.^146 It was doubtless spurge, too, that was the ‘milkwort’ recorded as
used in some part(s) of Wales for slight bites by dogs, cats and ‘venomous
animals’,^147 for that is one of the subsidiary applications featuring in the folk
records for E. helioscopia.
Oxalidaceae
Oxalis acetosella Linnaeus
wood-sorrel
Europe, northern and central Asia, allied species in North America
Because of its frequent confusion with ‘cuckoo sorrel’, which seems to have
been normallyRumex acetosa,as well as its long-standing competition with
Tr ifoliumspecies for the honour of being the ‘shamrock’ of Irish legend, folk