Lesser Spearwort

Overview

Spearwort grows at the edges of ponds and streams, in marshes and wet meadows, with narrow spear-shaped leaves and small, bright yellow flowers that could be taken, at a casual glance, for a water buttercup — which is exactly what it is, in the classification that matters. It contains protoanemonin, as all the ranunculaceae do, released from damaged tissue with an efficiency matched by few other plants in wet habitats. The name *flammula* — little flame — refers to what the sap does to skin. The beggars who used it to raise artificial sores were applying the same principle: the blistering is real, the lesions are real, the pain is real.

Botanical Notes

A perennial, 5–50cm, erect or creeping, variable in habit depending on water depth and current. Leaves narrow-lanceolate to oblong, the lower often broader; stems hollow. Flowers 7–15mm, five bright yellow petals, glossy, from May to September. Found in marshes, pond margins, ditches, stream banks, and wet grassland throughout Europe. The larger great spearwort (*R. lingua*) reaches 120cm and is far less common, found in fens and deep ditches; both species contain similar toxins. The protoanemonin content is highest in fresh, damaged tissue and decreases significantly on drying. Closely related to the common buttercup (*R. acris*) and water crowfoots (*R. aquatilis* and relatives), all of which share the same blistering compounds.

Lore & History

The beggars who used spearwort to produce artificial wounds for sympathy and alms appear in English sources from at least the sixteenth century; Thomas Harman, writing about vagabonds and their tricks in 1566, describes the practice in detail. The sores produced were convincing enough to suggest genuine disease or injury, and the plant was apparently easy to obtain from any ditch or pond margin. The use of blistering agents — whether spearwort, euphorbias, or later the deliberate application of caustics — to produce wounds that would attract charity represents a tradition of deliberate self-harm in the service of economic survival that the moralists who wrote about it consistently misunderstood as fraudulent rather than desperate.

Warnings