Britain's Wild Flowers by Richardson Rosamond;

Author:Richardson, Rosamond;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pavilion Books
Published: 2017-04-11T16:00:00+00:00

When the flowers hang downwards it’s a sign of impending bad weather. The Victorian botanist Anne Pratt observed, ‘when growing in exposed situations, the stems and leaves have a rich crimson colour, and often in autumn, when they linger on a bank, they are almost as beautiful as the flowers themselves’. As Wordsworth commented, ‘Poor Robin is yet flowerless, but how gay with his red stalks upon this sunny day’. These red stems gave the herba roberti of apothecaries’ medieval Latin the appellation of herba rubra, and by association the plant was effective, by the Doctrine of Signatures, in staunching the flow of blood. Classified as an official medicinal herb in the Middle Ages, Herb Robert was a wound healer, and still features in folk medicine for stomach and digestive complaints, as well as for kidney and bladder infections. In homeopathy the flowers and leaves, rich in tannins, are prescribed as a remedy for diarrhoea, or applied to slow-healing lesions. Herb Robert was made into a poultice for inflammations, and a compress from the crushed leaves was a remedy for skin eruptions and bruises. It was made into an eyewash, and in Wales was a cure for gout. An infusion from the leaves was gargled for throat and mouth infections. Culpeper agreed that it could indeed cure all these ailments: ‘You may persuade yourself this is true and conceive a good reason for it.’

Herb Robert may have got its name from the eleventh-century St Robert of Molesme who founded Cîteaux Abbey in France, later the seat of the Cistercian Order under St Bernard. It’s said that he staunched wounds and healed ulcers with the plant. St Robert’s feast day falls on 29 April when Herb Robert is coming into flower, and he was invoked to help cure these conditions. Other sources maintain that the plant was named after Robert, Duke of Normandy, son of William the Conqueror and patron of medical botany, who used Herb Robert to cure the plague –‘Ruprecht’s-plage’, Robert’s plague. A celebrated treatise was addressed to Duke Robert in which Geranium robertianum is named as an official herb: The Salerno Book of Health opens with the timeless advice: ‘Use three Physicians still; first Doctor Quiet, Next Doctor Merry-man, and Doctor Diet.’

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