Medicinal Plants In Folk Tradition [Paperback]

Assembled by two of the most distinguished botanical and ethnological scholars in Britain, this book chronicles the medicinal uses of more than 400 species used by the plain folk of Britain and Ireland. The history of these plants' usages has been mined from rich firsthand accounts captured by surveys, from more than 1000 manuscript volumes of the Irish Folklore Commission, and from close to 300 other published and unpublished sources.

This book is only available through print on demand. All interior art is black and white.

David E. Allen studied archaeology and anthropology at Cambridge. A long interest in field botany led to his becoming president and an honorary member of the Botanical Society of the British Isles, and past president of the Society for the History of Natural History, which has awarded him a Founder's Medal for his substantial contribution to the study of the history of natural history. He is the author of numerous botanical books.

Except for pennyroyal (Mentha pulegium), the members of the genusMentha, if distinguished at all in the folk literature, have borne their vernacular names interchangeably and have been used medicinally for such a broadly similar range of ailments that it is appropriate to discuss them together. Most records probably relate to the native water mint (M. aquatica), the common species of wet places. That is widely known also as 'water peppermint' or 'wild peppermint', names rarely relating to the true peppermint (M. ×piperita), which is a garden hybrid, originating in England in the seventeenth century. Though spearmint (M. spicata) is probably always distinguished correctly, only two folk records of that have been found, while the solitary one for 'horse mint' cannot confidently be ascribed to any of the species or hybrids now recognized by taxonomists. Until grown as pot-herbs, some of which have crept out of gardens and become naturalised in lS.