A word about some useful plants

St John's wort, lungwort, and ragwort are well known plants. But a search for the word-ending '-wort' in the Oxford English Dictionary finds more than 400 other examples of plants ending in 'wort' - have you heard of clown's lungwort, or garlic treaclewort?

A word with the suffix 'wort' is often very old. The Old English word was wyrt, from German origins that connect it to 'root'. It was often used in the names of herbs and plants that had medicinal uses, the first part of the word denoting the complaint against which it might be specially efficacious. The suffix was also used more generally. Ragwort has ragged leaves and St John's wort was believed to flower near the feast day of St John the Baptist (24 June). By the middle of the 17th-century '-wort' was beginning to fade from everyday use.

Here are some plants and their purported uses:

barrenwort, a plant thought to cause infertility

birthwort, used to aid childbirth

butterwort, a bog plant reputed to be able to keep cows in milk

figwort, originally denoting a different plant which was used as treatment for piles (from the obsolete term for piles fig (from the resemblance in shape)

fleawort, a name given to various plants which supposedly destroy fleas

honewort, used to combat swelling - from the obsolete hone 'swelling'

lungwort, the leaves of this plant resemble a diseased lung

mugwort, reputed to drive away midges, from the Old English mycg(e)

rupturewort, a plant believed to cure hernia

sneezewort, wild pellitory, the dried leaves of which are powdered and used as a sternutatory

stitchwort, a plant supposed to cure a stitch in the side (from the Old English stice meaning a prick or stab)

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