A veterinary medicine as much as a human one, the plant’s roots contain
a white starchy powder extracted by boiling, which has been drunk in par-
ticular for lung and chest complaints, pulmonary tuberculosis, whooping
cough and asthma (Norfolk,^136 Orkney^137 and the Isle of Man^138 as far as
Britain is concerned). Wounds (in Sussex^139 ) and toothache (in Cheshire^140 )
are further ailments for which there are British records.
In Ireland the lung and chest application has similarly been the main one
(Cavan,^141 We x f o r d^142 and doubtless—as the cough cure obtained from mea-
can uilian or ‘wild parsnip’—Clare^143 and Limerick,^144 too).
Pulicaria dysenterica (Linnaeus) Bernhardi
common fleabane
Europe, Asia Minor, North Africa; introduced into New Zealand
(Folk credentials questionable) A plant ofthe herbals, hopefully identified by
their authors with one celebrated in Classical times for insecticidal properties,
Pulicaria dysenterica enjoyed a vogue for that purpose in what seem to have
been relatively sophisticated circles and the only two allegedly folk records
sound suspiciously like hand-downs from book learning. In Devon it was
recommended to be gathered and dried for burning every morning in rooms
to rid them of flies,^145 and in Sussex it was one of four strewing herbs princi-
pally employed to keep away fleas.145aThat those records are both from
southernmost England, despite the plant’s wide distribution elsewhere in the
British Isles, supports the impression that it was at best a marginal interloper
as far as the folk tradition was concerned. Tansy, mugwort and the worm-
woods have amply served the same purpose instead.
Solidago virgaurea Linnaeus
goldenrod
Eurasia; introduced into New Zealand
In learned medicine long popular as a wound herb,Solidago virgaurea has lin-
gered on in use for that purpose in Sussex,^146 the East Riding of Yorkshire^147
and the Hebrides.^148 Martin Martin, to whom we owe our knowledge of its
survival in the last-named, recorded it as an ingredient in two different oint-
ments, one combined with ‘all-heal’ (Stachys spp.?) and applied to wounds in
Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, the other smeared in Skye on fractures at the
stage of healing when splints could be removed.^149
In Ireland, however, the ailments for which this common plant has been
recorded in use are very different from those, so much so as to suggest that
not only was it never a wound herb there (perhaps purple-loosestrife,
Daisies 293