Compendium

The globeflower is a perennial of the buttercup family, at home in damp woods and mountain pastures across northern and central Europe, from the Caucasus and Siberia west to Wales and now and then Ireland, and growing wild in Scotland and the north of England. It stands about two feet high on hollow stems, each topped by a single yellow flower about two inches across that stays almost closed in a ball, so that it looks like a tiny yellow cabbage; the few leaves, low on the stem, are deeply cut into three to five lobes. Kynes notes that it holds back the growth of plants near it. Much of its name and lore comes from northern folklore. In Scotland it was called witches' gowan, gowan having once meant any large yellow flower, and its white, toxic sap was witches' milk. A Dutch legend has elves using the flowers as cups to brew poison, and in Scandinavian myth the plant is poisonous because trolls tampered with it. Grieve, writing in 1931, describes it as a favourite flower of rustic festivals, gathered by young people in early June to deck cottage doors, and reports that the Swedish naturalist Peter Kalm thought the plant lost most of its strength when dried. In magic it serves for defence and for warding off negative energy, called up as an image of a ball of soft yellow light.