Food Plants identified in John Lightfoot's 1777 Flora Scotica Here's some transcriptions of some of the ethnobotanical notes found in Lightfoot's survey of Scotland and the Hebrides on how people used plants as foods - Flora Scotica Common stinging nettle – “nettle-tops in the Spring are often boil’d and eaten by the common people instead of cabbage-greens” “In Arran and other islands, a rennet is made of a strong decoction of nettles: a quart of salt is put into three pints of the decoction, and bottled up for use. A common spoonful of this liquor will coagulate a large bowl of milk very readily and agreeably, as we saw and experienced.” Scots Pine – “At loch-broom, in Ross Shire, we observed that the fishermen made ropes from the inner bark but hard necessity has taught the inhabitants of Sweden, Lapland and Kamschatka, to convert the same into bread. To effect this they, in the Spring season, make choice the tallest and fairest trees, then s...
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Gaelic Garden A wee early draft booklet I prepared for helping create a "Gaelic Garden" with Fearnag Growers Community Garden in Farr. Agrimony Poyntzfield - ( Mur-dhraidhean ) Agrimonia eupatoria P 45cm. Bears small yellow flower spikes, yielding a yellow dye. Makes a gargle for coughs and externally in a lotion for wounds. Sow the seeds outside in the autumn. Mary Beith – mur-druidheann, muir-droighinn, mùr-dhroigheann, a’gheurag bhileach “This plant was used to some extent in the Gaelic folk tradition by way of an infusion of the dried leaves for ‘open obstructions of the liver’, and it was included in the extensive and sometimes exotic pharmacopoeia of the medieval Highland physicians – being used, for example, in the treatment of liver problems and as an ingredient in compounds for ‘correcting imbalances in various humours’. I have taken a certain liberty in the third of its Gae...