Plant-Lore

Collecting the folklore and uses of plants

Greater celandine

1.  As is done with the chyle [sap] of Taraxacum officinale [dandelion] the chyle of Chelidonium is used as a treatment against warts [Essen, Germany, November 2014].

1022.  Janet Baker grew up on a farm just outside Ilminster, Somerset. Her father kept a greater celandine by the backdoor to treat warts and verrucas. c.1940-50 [Leatherhead, Surrey, May 2013].

3. An infusion of leaves and flowers of greater celandine bathed onto the eyes daily is said to reduce or even cure the development of cataracts [Whitstable, Kent, January 2012].

4. Notes compiled by a close farming friend of mine [of Mardu, Clun] …
Greater celandine – the juice from the leaves passed over the eyelids for eye problems or failing sight [Newcastle-on-Clun, Shropshire, November 2004].

5. Children in Warwickshire in the 1920s used orange sap of greater celandine (Chelidonium majus) to cure warts. It works! [Mordiford, Herefordshire, December 1991].

5. Wildflower names used in Wiltshire … wart wort – greater celandine [Rowde, Wiltshire, February 1982].

Images: main, Christchurch Road, Brixton, London Borough of Lambeth,  April 2014; upper inset, Tisbury, Wiltshire, May 2015; lower inset, broken leaf-stalk, showing yellow sap, Peterborough, Cambridgeshire, October 2017.