Pulmonaria (Lungwort var: ‘Blue Ensign’)
Lungwort
Most of my gardening books begin the section on Lungworts with an apology - an ugly name for a pretty little flower. Lungworts are native to Europe and Western Asia and this cultivar, Blue Ensign, is particularly popular as a spring flower.
The name of this plant is an example of sympathetic medicine applied to botany. It was believed that plants that resemble in some way, an afflicted body part, where placed on earth by a higher power as medicine to alleviate specific diseases.
‘Wort’ is an Olde English word added as a suffix to the common name of plants that were considered useful. Lungwort was thought useful for disorders of the lung because the leaves of one species’ Pulmonaria officinalis, are shaped like a human lung and have white spots on the surface like diseased lung tissue.
The genus name, Pulmonaria, is Latin for lung but the belief system which underlies sympathetic medicine is far older than that. Examples of sympathetic medicine are found in indigenous cultures all over the world. Some believe they go back far into prehistory, to a time when we still lived in caves.
