Intriguing World of Weeds Yellow Toadf1ax1
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Intriguing World of Weeds Yellow Toadf1ax1 LARRY W. MmCH2 INTRODUCTION small, slender, blackish stalks "from which do grow There are about 130 species of Linaria, a genus of many long narrow leaves like flax. The flowers be hardy herbs with whorled or opposite leaves; a few yellow with a spurre hanging at the same like unto a species are sub-shrubs. The genus, native to Eurasia, is Larkesspurre, having a mouth like unto a frog's mouth, widely dispersed (8). Closely even such as it is to be. seene in the common Snapdra related but separated from Linaria gon" (9). are the genera Kickxia and Cym However, William Coles (1626-1662) believed the balaria. plant was called toadflax became toads sometimes The generic name, Linaria, de sheltered "themselves among the branches of it" (3). rived from the Latin linon or linum, Other names include butter-and-eggs, eggs-and-bacon, means flax (true flax is Linum brideweed, dragon bushes, yellow rod, devil's ribbon, usitatissimum L.) (11). Many weedy devil's head, peddler's basket, and toad (12). species of Linaria resemble flax in In the Middle Ages, yellow toadflax was called wild leaf shape and arrangement, espe snapdragon because of its close resemblance to the cially yellow toadflax (L. vulgaris garden snapdragon, Antirrhinum majus L., whose Mill.), an erect and comely glaucous perennial 30 to 80 generic name means dragon mouth. Like snapdragon, cm tall, with linear leaves and several erect leafy stems. the flower of yellow toadflax, when pinched, opens its From June to September it bears bright spikes of rich "mouth", revealing four toothlike stamens and a double yellow orange-tipped yellow flowers resembling snap pistil or tongue (12). dragons (13). Yellow toadflax, native to Europe, is In 1753, Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778) described found throughout Europe on banks, in hedges, waste Linaria vulgaris as Antirrhinum linaria in Species Plan places, and along roadsides, generally in sandy or grav tarum. Philip Miller (1691-1771), in 1768, reclassified elly soils (10). it as Linaria vulgaris in the 8th edition of his Garden Because of its color combination, a popular common ing Dictionary. Gustav Karl Wilhelm Hermann Karsten name for yellow toadflax is butter-and-eggs. The scent (1817-1908), in Flora von Deutschland, published in of toadflax has been described as a cheesy odor, like an 1882, reclassified it again as Linaria linaria. Miller's un-aired dairy, but it has also been described as a faint, name was later restored when the rules of botanical sweet fragrance (7). nomenclature dictated that it was no longer valid to give a genus and species the same name (1). Some reference books give Sir John Hill credit for the name ETYMOLOGY L. vulgaris, but it was published invalidly so is not Toadflax entered the English language in 1578. acceptable. The species name vulgaris is from the Latin Wrote Stanworte, "Wilde flaxe, or Tode flax, hath and means commonplace or ordinary (11). small, slender, blackish stalks." By 1630,when Drayton wrote Muses' Elysium, the spelling had been changed to MEDICINAL USES toad-flax. Wrote he: "By toad-flax which your nose may taste, If you have a mind to cast." Over two Toadflax, like snapdragons and figworts, is placed in centuries later, J. T. Burgus in English Wild Flowers, the Scrophulariaceae, a family of medical significance. published in 1868, mentioned the "butter-and-eggs of The figworts once provided a cure for figs or piles. And the country folk-the yellow toadflax" (14). the figworts with deep-throated flowers, including yel John Gerard (1545-1612) called Linaria "a kind of low toadflax, were believed to be specific remedies for Antyrrhinum (t.ntirrhinum, the snapdragon)," having throat ailments, particularly scrofula, an enlargement of the lymph glands of the neck and a feared disease during the Middle Ages. Yellow toadflax is an excellent example of Culpeper's "doctrine of signatures," which 1No. 41 of the series "Intriguing World of Weeds." 2Ext. Weed Sci., Sect. Plant Biology, Univ. California. Davis, CA 95616. affirmed that a plant could cure an affliction of the part 791 Weed Technology. 1993. Volume 7:791-793 INTRIGUING WORLD OF WEEDS of the human body that it resembled. For centuries, This delicate little plant, a native of the yellow toadflax was regarded with fear and respect (4). Mediterranean region, was first introduced In Cruyde Boeck, published in 1554, Rembert Do into Britain as a salad herb and was care doens (1517-1585) relates that as a medicinal herb, fully cultivated as an exotic in the early ,1 toadflax was used during the 16th century to relieve the 17th century; then it escaped to colonize hot swellings of buboes, while Hieronymus Bock old walls everywhere (6). It is highly (1498-1554) noted that it removed the obstructions in adapted to damp rocks and old walls, il liver and spleen, and carried away the water of drop where it seeds freely-hence one of its sies. The juice alone "healeth foul ulcers, whether they names, mother of thousands. The early are cancerous or not-if the parts be washed or injected herbals of Parkinson and Gerard show therewith," and when mixed with "the powder of lu plates with the plant springing upward from a brick pines" it cleanses the skin of "spots, pimples, scurf, wall, probably because the blockmakers were unwilling wheals, morphew, leprosy, and other deformities" (12). to accept that the plant grows downwards (7). Medici The water distilled from the herb "is a certain remedy nally, its pungent, acrid-tasting leaves were prescribed for the heat, redness and inflammation of the eyes, for their anti-scorbutic principles and for diabetes (12). being simply dropped into them," and "the whole herb At least two other related species were prescribed as chopped and boiled in the grease of old hog until green, astringents in Europe and Britain during the medieval maketh an excellent application for the piles, ugly sores period. One, female fluvellin [Kichxia spuria (L.) and eruptions of the skin" (12). Gerard recommended it Dumort.], is a low, often prostrate, soft hairy annual for jaundice and dropsy (9). with roundish alternate leaves, bearing solitary yellow At that time, many people also believed that yellow flowers with maroon upper lips on slender downy stalks toadflax seeds held a mystic power. Three seeds strung at the base of the leaves (12). It is found in dry places on a linen thread made a charm sufficiently potent to and cultivated ground. The other, sharppoint fluvellin protect one from all evil. And any spell cast upon you [K. elatine (L.) Dumort.], is a similar but more slender could be broken by walking around a yellow toadflax in plant, with triangular upper leaves and small pale yel full bloom three times (12). low flowers with deep violet-purple upper lips and The whole of the herb, gathered just as it comes into throats. Both plants can be found in most of Europe, flower, is still prescribed for its astringent, detergent often growing together, although in the north they are and hepatic principles, mainly for jaundice, liver trou introductions (12). bles, and various skin diseases. Its active constituents Sharppoint fluvellin was prescribed during the 16th are two glycosides known as linarin and pectolinarian and 17th centuries as "a vulnery plant-and accounted (12). good for fluxes and hemorrhages of all sorts" and was By the Elizabethan period, yellow toadflax was being administered "to hot watery and inflamed eyes-as also grown in flower gardens and herbalist John Gerard fluxes of blood or humours-as the lax, bloody, flux, called it "a most glorious and goodly flower" (9). A women's courses" and to "stay all manner of bleeding generation later, John Rea urged gardeners to grow at nose, mouth, or any other place, or that comes by any yellow toadflax in their flower beds for color and other bruise or hurt~r the bursting of veins" (12). remarked that once planted, it needed little care. Before , It is still occasionally prescribed infused for its as long, however, Geoffery Grigson warned gardeners tringent principles, and is taken or applied for relief of about "that devil of a yellow toadflax that crowds our nose bleeds, internal bleeding, and for excessive men valuable plants." He added that in America, colonial struation (10). farmers called it "dead-men's-bones" (10). Culpepper reported that Sussex 17th century farmers THE IMMIGRANT called it gallwort and added it to the-drinking water of poultry to rid them of galls (4). Yellow toadflax was introduced to America from Kenilworth ivy, Cymbalaria muralis Gaertn., Mey. Wales, as a garden flower, by Ranstead, a Welsh & Schreb. (synonym L. cymbalaria), is a small trailing Quaker who came to Delaware with William Penn (5). annual with ivy-like leaves, the stems rooting as they It flourished in his garden and soon was cultivated in spread along, and bearing in summer pale lilac to other colonial flower gardens. Ranstead shared it with purple colored snapdragon-like flowers. other settlers who were eager to get it for use in a lotion 792 Volume 7, Issue 3 (July-September) 1993 WEED TECHNOLOGY that was unparalleled for insect bites. Toadflax lotion and requiring much persevering effort to extirpate was a popular English tradition and there are many them." By 1785, the Reverend Manassah Cultuer of references to it in New England records (5). And before Boston described toadflax as "a common, handsome, the introduction of screen doors, window screens, and tedious weed" (7). But in 1976, Durant commented: flypaper, yellow toadflax was used to fight the swarms "This is a pasture flower, a waste place flower, a of flies that tormented settlers.