1. Tansy was used to keep rats out of corn stacks in Scottish Isles. I have seen it done. Don’t think it works, but the rats smell nice [South Ronaldsay, Orkney 2017].
2. Many years ago an old lady told me that when she was a girl in the Shropshire countryside people used to use tansy as a floor covering. This was used to keep the air pleasant. The houses had bare stone floors [Cannock, Staffordshire, April 2012].
3. Tansy – if as a stepchild you suspect your stepmother is poisoning you, [you] immediately should eat some tansy leaves … given to me by a couple of people in a party that I was taking around our gardens, so regretfully I didn’t get the geographical source [Barsham, Suffolk, May 2002].
4. Occasionally known as yellow buttons – used as a moth repellent, and placed round the home it can discourage flies and other insects. It can used as a vermicide [Lerwick, Shetland, March 1994].
Images: main, cultivated, Glastonbury Abbey, Somerset, August 2014; inset, cultivated, Brockwell Park Community Greenhouses, London Borough of Lambeth, August 2015.