quite a range of plants as a teething necklace for babies have been exclusively
English, too?
Unsurprisingly, it is between Britain and Ireland that the greatest number of
differences are to be found. For millennia the two have been isolated from
each other by geography in a far more thoroughgoing way than Wales has
been from England or the northern half of Scotland from the parts of Britain
to its south. For much of that time, too, Ireland has enjoyed a substantial
degree of cultural autonomy. The Irish flora lacks a third of Britain’s species,
principally on account of its greater distance from the European mainland
and its much more limited upland terrain. Basically, though, the Irish flora is
similar to Britain’s. This has not prevented the two countries diverging very
considerably in the ways in which they have exploited the natural botanical
heritage for therapeutic purposes. Ireland’s lengthier history of poverty and,
especially in the west, greater remoteness from the Classical herbal tradition
introduced to England by the Romans and subsequently perpetuated and
widely diffused there have compelled in this respect a self-sufficiency that
has been both more extensive and longer-lasting.
At the same time that comparative freedom from Continental influence
must not be exaggerated. More records have proved forthcoming from Ire-
land than from Britain of the herbal use of two plants,Berberis vulgaris (bar-
berry) and Ruscus aculeatus (butcher’s-broom), that are not accepted by bot-
anists as other than human introductions in the former. The impressively
wide scatter of those Irish records can only therefore be the product of monk-
ish or later usage.
Even if a plant features on the list of unquestioned Irish natives, it does
not follow that any or of all the medicinal purposes to which it may have
been put are themselves Irish in origin. Remedies on record largely or wholly
from the area around Dublin—such as those described for Pilosella offici-
narum (mouse-ear hawkweed)—particularly invite suspicion in this con-
nection. At the same time some distribution patterns that appear suspicious
may have quite innocent explanations. Thus all the records traced of the use
ofRumex acetosa (common sorrel) to poultice boils and other septic sores are
from the south-eastern counties, seemingly pointing to an infiltration of that
use from Wales or England, yet no evidence has been found that that has ever
been one of the functions of this plant in either of those countries. Alien
influences, though, do not all have to come from those quarters of the com-
pass. There are records from six Irish counties, all of them in Leinster, of a
Distribution Patterns 343