Garden Plants - Lady's Mantle

Lady's Mantle has a whole bunch of other names; Lion's Foot, Bear's Foot, Nine Hooks, and its real or genus name - Alchemilla.

The common name, Lady's Mantle, was first bestowed on it by the sixteenth-century botanist, Jerome Bock, who is always known by the Latinized version of his name which is Tragus; isn't it odd how plant-namers all seem to have changed their own names?

Anyway, it appears under as Lady's Mantle in his famous History of Plants, published in 1532. In the Middle Ages it had been associated with the Virgin Mary (which is why the name is Lady's Mantle, not Ladies' Mantle), because the lobes of the leaves were thought to resemble the scalloped edges of a mantle. In mediaeval Latin we also find it called Leontopodium (lion's foot), probably from its spreading root-leaves, and this has become, in modern French, Pied-de-lion. We occasionally find the same idea expressed in two English local names, 'Lion's foot' and 'Bear's foot.

Lady's Mantle has a long history of herbal use, mainly as an external treatment for cuts and wounds, and internally in the treatment of diarrhoea and a number of women's ailments, especially menstrual problems

The generic name Alchemilla is derived from the Arabic word alkemelych = alchemy, because of the wonder-working powers of the plant. Others held that the alchemical virtues lay in the influence the foliage imparted to the dewdrops that lay in its furrowed leaves and in the little cup formed by its joined stipules, these dewdrops constituting part of many mystic potions including face washes for women who wished to be more beautiful. It is certainly true that cattle and horses won't eat the leaves until the dew has been brushed off or evaporates in the heat of the sun.

Garden Lady's Mantle photograph by Linda N., used under a creative commons attribution licence