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How were butterworts used?

May 12, 2003

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Butterworts are diminutive plants, small rosettes of leaves coated with a greasy secretion. The plants trap and digest small insects. There are an estimated seventy species native to the Northern Hemisphere. In 1597, John Gerard knew little of butterworts and apparently the only reference he could find was from Clusius. (See Plants that Changed History, April 2, 2002)

Herbalists classified the common butterwort (Pinguicula vulgaris Linnaeus) with a group of plants called the sanicles. Gerard wrote of the Yorkshire sanicle, "The second kind of Sanicle, which Clusius calleth Pinguicula, not before his time remembered, hath small thicke leaves, fat and ful of juyce...."

Plant of the Week 05/12/2003

Primrose-flowered Butterwort (Pinguicula primuliflora)
Plant of the Week 05/12/2003

Gerard knew of only one medicinal use, "The husbandmens wives of Yorkshire do use to anoint the dugs of their kine (udders of their milking cows) with the fat and oilous juyce of the herbe Butterwort, when they are bitten with any venomous worme, or chapped, rifted (cracked), and hurt by any other meanes." Although useful for cattle, the butterwort was thought poisonous to sheep. Gerard mentions, "They say it rots their sheep, when for want of other food they eat thereof." (The Herbal or General Historie of Plants, 1633 edition)

Mrs. Grieve mentions its topical use, "Yorkshire sanicle is one of the names given sometimes to Butterwort, or Marsh Violet...a plant with violet-coloured flowers and thick...leaves which...to the touch are greasy, causing them to be used for application to sores and chapped hands." (A Modern Herbal, 1931, reprinted 1996, Barnes & Noble Books)

In Sweden, the common butterwort is known as the tätört or tätgräs. In 1732, Linnaeus hiked the Swedish countryside, collecting and documenting the uses of the native plants. He spent time at Jokmokk, a town just north of the Arctic Circle and recorded in his diary that the local people used the butterwort to curdle milk. ("Unfinished Journey of Carl Linnaeus", Paul Alan Cox, Plant Talk, 1999)

Den Virtuella Floran has three photographs of the common butterwort, Pinguicula vulgaris. To view the photographs, click on the link:

http://linnaeus.nrm.se/flora/di/lentibularia/pingu/pingvul.html