Hydrocotyle vulgaris (L) Marsh Pennywort
NOMENCLATURE
Hydrocotyle : from Greek_________: hydor: water &
_________ kotyle: a dish/cup, ref. to leaves.
vulgaris : common
Pennywort: resemblance to Tudor silver pennies.
OTHER NAMES:
Pennywort. Fairy tables, water! white rot, (Ches). Penny rot, (Shrop). Farthing rot, flowkwort,
(Norf). Rotgrass, (N'thum). Shilling rot, (Ayr). Sheep rot, War, Cumb, N'thum, Caith): all because
it was thought to cause foot rot in sheep.
BOTANICAL DESCRIPTION
TYPE: aquatic perennial herb, glabrous except for the petioles. Massed in broad batches. H.
STEMS : slender, creeping, rooting at nodes.
UMBELS : 2-3 cm diam. 3-6 flrd, sometimes 1-3 whorls of firs below. Peduncles < than petioles.
LEAVES : orbicular, 8-35mm across. peltate. crenate. 6-9 main veins, radiating from junction
of blade + petiole. Petioles 25cm, sparsely hairy, with scarious laciniate stipules. Cotyledons
contracted into a petiole.
FLOWERS: white tinged with pink, green, hermaphrodite, 1mm. Subsessile, 3-6 in a simple, head
like umbel 3mm across, sometimes with 1-3 whorls of flowers below. Sepals minute or absent.
Ovary with >or< flat disc at the apex. Stigma matures before last of 5 anthers burst. Styles not
thickened at base, maturing in succession. Self pollination. Fl. 6-7.
FRUIT : 2mm wide, wider than >, covered with brown resinous dots, v. laterally compressed.
Commisure narrow. Carpophore absent. Mericarps slender. rather prominent ridges.
Vittae present when fruit mature. Styles spread horizontally or recurved, x2 >
as disc. Stigma truncate. 2n=96.
HABITAT : marshy ground, often among mosses specifically sphagnum. Acidic soil.
DISTRIBUTION: native, <400m. Every County except Midlands & N. Scotland. W.&
C.& S. Europe to 60N, Scandanavia. Caucasus. N. Africa.
HISTORICAL MEDICINAL USES
Culpepper, l7thC : “Good for breaking stones & voiding them.”
Whooping cough cure in Danish folk medicine.
FOLKLORE
Called -rot, in the belief it caused liver rot in sheep. The real culprit is liver fluke, which lives on the plant.
Jhon Fitzherbert : ‘Booke of Husbandrie’ 1534 “It roteth sheepe. ". . it is necessary that a
sheperde should knowe what thynge rotteth shepe.”
http://www.mpiz-koeln.mpg.de/~stueber/thome/band3/tafel_041_small.jpg