182 Eryngium maritimum
by the common E. maritimum of sandy shores, and at least some of the
virtues claimed for the bitter root of the other were attributed to this one as
well. The roots had to be dug from a depth of six feet or more, were then
peeled, boiled and cut into slivers which were twisted like barley sugar and
covered in a very strong syrup. The resulting ‘eryngo-root’, for which the town
of Colchester enjoyed a particular reputation for centuries, was much prized
for coughs and colds^49 as well as, in popular lore, as an aphrodisiac. Physicians
thought highly of it as a tonic, too.
The plant was recorded by Roderic O’Flaherty as in use medicinally in
1684 in the remoteness of the Aran Islands, where it was still employed in
the 1920s to rid children of worms and as a general prophylactic.^50 In the
formerly hardly less remote Isle of Man, the root was also valued for its anti-
irritant property,^51 and ear infections treated with juice squeezed from the
leaves.^52 Ye t the prominent place the species occupied in learned medicine
together with the lack of records of putative folk use elsewhere in the British
Isles make it more probable than not that even in those areas it owed its pres-
ence in the healing repertory to the written tradition originally.
Anthriscus sylvestris (Linnaeus) Hoffman
cow parsley
Europe, north Asia, North and East Africa; introduced into
North America
Several wild species with umbels of white flowers and similarly finely cut
leaves have traditionally been called ‘parsley’ in combination with one prefix
or another (and shared other vernacular names as well, including ‘keck’,
‘Queen Anne’s lace’ and even ‘hemlock’).Anthriscus sylvestris is by far the
commonest of them, at any rate in England—in the north and west of the
British Isles it tends to be much scarcer—though its abundance may have
come about only in recent centuries, as a consequence of the multiplication
of roadside verges.
Whether or not records for ‘wild parsley’ or ‘hedge parsley’ belong to
Anthriscus sylvestris,one or more herbs passing under those names have at
any rate enjoyed a reputation in Gloucestershire (in the recipe book of a
barely literate farmer^53 ) and the Isle of Man^54 as a cure for kidney or bladder
stones or gravel. As that was one of the virtues also credited to the parsley of
gardens (Petroselinum crispum (Miller) Nyman ex A. W. Hill), however, the
exploitation of the wild relative(s) may merely have been a carry-over from
the cultivated species. More convincingly folk in origin was the use of a ‘wild