The Local Names page on this website lists over 30 names which have been given to rosebay willowherb (Chamerion angustifolium) and these names formed the basis for an article on the website.  However, it is probable that there are other names which have been given to this conspicuous plant, and it would be useful and interesting to known where and when the names already recorded are, or were, known.

So if you know of any alternative names for rosebay willowherb, please send them to roy@plant-lore.com, remembering to include where and when you learnt them.  Many thanks!

Responses:   

1. I worked in the City [of London] after the War; rosebay willowherb was everywhere on the bombsites; I knew it as fireweed [Raynes Park, London, August 2015].

2.  We call the seeds sugar stealers.  I’m from Lancashire; I would have first heard the term at my primary school in Helmshore in the Rossendale Valley [e-mail, July 2017].

3.  Rosebay willowherb known as blitz-weed, because it grew on bombsites in WW2 [e-mail, July 2017].

Images:  main, Baslow, Derbyshire, July 2015; inset, Biggar, South Lanarkshire, September 2022.

Edited 1 October 2022.