Here’s a nice picture of Feverfew. In common with most herbal remedies, Feverfew will cure almost anything – although usually migraines, these days.
Most people Google knows think that the name Feverfew is a corruption of the Latin – febrifugia (meaning a cure for a fever) – which is reasonably believable. It has at least ten alternative names of which Featherfoil is pretty descriptive of the leaves. Most of the rest are just names that seem to be applied to a great many plants, both the wild and the garden varieties, with total abandon.
Bachelor’s Buttons springs to mind here. It is possible that there used to be a great many spare bachelors in the days when people were going around naming things, but I suspect that the number of different plants called by this name is more related to bachelor’s ability to loose their buttons, or even perhaps, to bachelor’s lack of enthusiasm for sewing their buttons back on. Either way, it seems it harks back to those long ago, happier times – when bachelors rode around the country spewing buttons right, left and centre.
Most bachelors, these days, wear just a tee-shirt – so, hopefully in the future, we will see the number of different plants labelled Bachelor’s Buttons showing a steady decline.
Track and Hedge 