OPHIOGLOSSACEAE
Ophioglossum vulgatum Linnaeus
adder’s-tongue
northern temperate zone, North Africa
Perhaps because of a fancied resemblance ofOphioglossum vulgatum to a
hooded snake preparing to strike, it has had a reputation for curing adder
bites. Large quantities were gathered in the mid-nineteenth century in Sussex
and the counties round London14, 15and also in Devon^16 for inclusion with
various other herbs in a then very popular potion, ‘Adder’s-spear Ointment’,
employed for that purpose. However, that geographical distribution and the
large scale of the gathering suggest a commercial impetus behind this, and
even if it had genuinely a folk origin, the potion may have been a late import
and not indigenous to Britain at all. Similarly, because so many of the herbals
long recommended the fronds for healing wounds and cuts, it is hard to feel
confident that the plant’s use for that purpose in Lincolnshire^17 (other
records18–20are unlocalised as well as vague or ambiguous) was other than a
borrowing from that source. However, in Oxfordshire^21 and perhaps some
other areas^22 a tea made from the fronds has been drunk as a spring tonic
and that may well have a purer pedigree.
Botrychium lunaria (Linnaeus) Swartz
moonwort
Arctic and northern temperate zone, Australasia
Despite the magical powers widely credited to Botrychium lunaria,there
appears to be only a solitary record of its use in British folk medicine—and
that an early one. John Ray in his Catalogus Angliae cites his medical friend
Walter Needham as the source of the information that the Welsh considered
an ointment of this, when well rubbed into the region of the kidneys, an infal-
lible cure for dysentery.^23 Needham had practised in Shrewsbury and may
have learned of this from friends or patients from across the Welsh border (he
also told Ray of a herbal use of rowan,Sorbus aucuparia).
OSMUNDACEAE
Osmunda regalis Linnaeus
royal fern, bog-onion
all continents except Australasia
The most striking and distinctive of the ferns native to the British Isles,
Osmunda regalis seems to have substituted as the standard cure for sprains,
56 Ophioglossum vulgatum