Bugle

 

Bugle

B. Doherty 2018

Common Name        Bugle, gypsey weed, thunder and lightening

Scientific Name        Ajuga reptans

Gaelic                         Glasair choille

Flowering Period      May, June

Identification             Blue violet flowers 15mm long are borne in spikes on erect, four angled stems which are hairy on opposite sides. Leaves are shiney with a bronze tinge.

More about bugle

This native plant is a favourite of the dark green fritillary. It is a creeping perennial and grows to 20cm high in woodland and marshes.

Food Heritage

In his ‘Complete Herbal’ of 1653, Nicholas Culpeper wrote of Ajuga reptans: ‘if the virtues of it make you fall in love with it (as they will if you be wise) keep a syrup of it to take inwardly, and an ointment and plaster of it to use outwardly, always by you’

If you put the leaf of the bugle on a corn it will go. Bugle plant is an excellent cure for hemorrhage and consumption, but of course it only gives temporary relief to the latter as it is an incurable disease.– Source Duchas.ie