Tags
British flora, British wildflowers, Jacob's coat, Lungwort, Mary spilt the milk, Pulmonaria officinalis, Soldiers and sailors, spring flowers
I kid you not – Lungwort really is this wildflower’s common name (scientific name: Pulmonaria officinalis). And why? Well, it goes back to the times when people believed that the physical qualities of a plant – its shape, colour, features – reflected its uses (a theory also known as the doctrine of signatures). In this case, the freckled oval-shaped leaves were thought to resemble diseased lungs (and I thought I had a good imagination!) and so the plant was (and still is) used as a treatment for various respiratory ailments.
Those blotchy leaves are also the reason for one of the plant’s many common names, ‘Mary-spilt-the-milk’. And the variety of pinks and blues in its flowers are behind its other vernacular names, ‘Jacob’s coat’ and ‘Soldiers and Sailors’ – all much more understandable.
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It’s not a plant I like much but you make it look pretty in your photos.
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Thanks. This was the first time I’d seen it and I thought it was pretty. 🙂
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I always like seeing pulmonaria – the leaves and the colour variation in the clusters of flowers.
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It was a new plant for me, Susan, but I’ll know it now when I see it.
Btw, I discovered the meaning of susurrus recently – it was Rob Macfarlane’s word of the day on twitter. 🙂
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I checked some of the comments to his tweet and love the idea of susurrare! Latin words often have a nice ring to them.
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