MEDICINAL PLANTS in Folk Tradition - Killerwall.net

50 Tremella mesenterica
Tremella mesenterica Retzius ex Hooker
jelly fungus, yellow brain-fungus
Arctic and northern temperate region, Caribbean, North Africa,
Australasia, Falkland Islands
The early Anglesey botanist Hugh Davies insisted that the gelatinous mass
known in those parts under the name ‘star-shot’, which he had found very
effective when rubbed on chilblains, was a species of Tremella and not, as
then usually assumed, the blue-green alga Nostoc commune 90 (q.v.).
Auricularia auricula-judae (Bulliard ex Fries) Wettstein
ear fungus
northern temperate zone, Caribbean
The very common Auricularia auricula-judae, a fungus of dead or moribund
trees, almost wholly on elder in Europe (though on a wider range in North
America), once enjoyed a reputation for easing sore throats, coughs and
hoarseness when boiled in water to a jelly-like consistency. It was warmly
recommended by Gerard and other authors of herbals. The only allegedly
folk records of its use, however, are from the Highlands, as a gargle for sore
throats, 91 and from the north-western part of central Ireland, where it has
been boiled in milk as a cure for jaundice. 92
GASTEROMYCETES
Bovista nigrescens (Persoon) Persoon; and other Lycoperdaceae
puffball, bolfer, fuzzball, blind man’s buff, devil’s snuffbox
Europe, Middle East, East Africa
The spores and the absorbent inner tissue of various members of the family
Lycoperdaceae share a well-founded reputation for effectiveness in staunching
all but the most profuse forms of bleeding. This reputation is not only
common to much of Europe, but on the evidence of an archaeological find is
also probably very ancient. At Skara Brae in Orkney, the best-preserved prehistoric
village in northern Europe, in undisturbed layers of a midden which
yielded a calibrated radiocarbon date of 1750–2130 b.p., ten mature fruitbodies
of one of these species, Bovista nigrescens, were excavated from a single
trench in 1972–3. So many in one spot strongly pointed to collection for
a purpose, and as they are inedible when mature, it is most unlikely that it had
been for food. 93 According to John Parkinson, country surgeons in seventeenth-century
England were often in the practice of stringing up skeins of