Liverwort

Liverwort here is the common hepatica, a small herbaceous perennial of the buttercup family, Ranunculaceae, native to woodland in the temperate Northern Hemisphere. It stands only five to fifteen centimetres high, its leaves and flowers rising straight from a rhizome rather than from a stem above ground. The fleshy, three-lobed leaves are dark green with whitish streaks above and violet or reddish brown beneath, and they stay green through the winter. It is also known under the genus Hepatica, as Hepatica nobilis, but phylogenetic studies indicate that the hepaticas belong within Anemone. In Japan, where it is called yukiwarisō, the snow-breaking plant, it is celebrated at winter flower festivals and appears often in nineteenth-century art, and as Hepatica nobilis it holds the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit. Ethnobotanical records cited in the AHPA handbook describe its traditional use as a contraceptive, for pain during pregnancy, for absent menstruation and to bring on labour. Cunningham's entry notes that in England the name liverwort is given to another plant, Peltigera canina. In magical practice it is a love herb: a woman is said to secure a man's love by keeping liverwort in a sachet about her at all times.