David E. Allen & Gabrielle Hatfield
Copyright © 2004 by David E. Allen and Gabrielle Hatfield.
Colour photographs © 2004 by Deni Bown.
All rights reserved.
So many people for so many years have been collecting and reporting the herbal remedies used by country folk that it must seem surprising that the resulting mass of data has not been brought together long since and surveyed overall. Certainly, it seemed surprising to the two of us, as interlopers from
the world of botany. For more than a century and a half, records of where in Britain and Ireland each species of wild plant is known to occur (or have occurred) have been sedulously logged and published. So well established is this tradition that the regular disciplined effort that sustains it has come to be taken for granted. Unfortunately, the study of folklore failed to attract individuals with the necessary time and to perform a similar service for records of plant use, and the magnitude of that task has increased with the passage of time.