Caryophyllaceae
Honckenya peploides (Linnaeus) Ehrhart
sea sandwort
Arctic and northern temperate zone
According to one of John Aubrey’s correspondents in 1695,Honckenya
peploides was one of several antiscorbutic herbs gathered in the northern
parts of Orkney.^66
Stellaria media (Linnaeus) Villars
common chickweed,fliodh
cosmopolitan weed
Perhaps because of their very commonness as weeds and therefore ready
availability,Stellaria media and groundsel (Senecio vulgaris) are alike in hav-
ing been employed for an impressive diversity of ailments, many of them the
same ones. Chickweed, though, is remarkable for the very limited number of
ways in which it has been applied. By far the commonest of those is in the
form of a mat, as a hot and relaxing poultice. The reason why that so pre-
dominates is that it has been used on a quite disproportionately extensive
scale for just one particular purpose: to reduce swellings, including those of
sprains and mumps, and other forms of inflammation. The heavy concen-
tration on that class of ailments, moreover, has been almost peculiar to Ire-
land, thus distorting matters even further. Out of sixty-eight records of use
for that purpose in the British Isles as a whole, the only ones that are other
than Irish are from Gloucestershire,^67 Berwickshire^68 and Orkney.^69
In Britain, and England in particular, it is boils, abscesses and ulcers,
rather, to which chickweed has been applied as a poultice: in Dorset,^70 Som-
erset,^71 Gloucestershire,^72 Norfolk^73 and the Highlands.^74 In Suffolk^75 ‘sore
legs’ (leg ulcers?) have been similarly treated, and in the Isle of Man,^76 bruises.
But whereas in Sussex^77 poulticing has been employed for rheumatism, in
Inverness-shire^78 that and stiff joints, as also chilblains and rashes, have
received the plant’s benefits in the form of an ointment, while for sore eyes in
Devon^79 and Somerset,^80 and eczema in Yorkshire,^81 that has been replaced in
turn by a lotion. In Skye,^82 to procure sleep after a fever, the feet and knees
were bathed with a chickweed wash preparatory to a warm poultice being
placed on the neck and between the shoulders. A tea, though, has been found
a sufficient remedy for insomnia in the Highlands,^83 and a rheumatism cure
in Essex^84 has taken that form, too, while for ‘water problems’ in Durham^85
and for slimming in the Highlands^86 a variation on that has been to drink a
Elms to Docks 91