# Pilewort (Ficaria verna)

*Lesser celandine; *Ficaria**

**Known today as.** *Ficaria verna* (*Ranunculus ficaria*), of the buttercup family, whose glossy yellow stars open in early spring above knobbed roots.

Kind: Plant  
Poisoning: Buttercup blistering (https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/poisons/protoanemonin)  
Toxic: yes

> **Caution.** Irritant when fresh.

## What was it used for?

For the piles, in ointments and poultices of the roots, which were thought to resemble them: the doctrine of signatures at its plainest.

## What does modern science say?

No trial evidence. Fresh, it contains protoanemonin, which blisters the skin and irritates the gut.

## Pharmacognosy and toxicology

- **ranunculin**: which yields protoanemonin on bruising
- **protoanemonin**: a blistering lactone
- **saponins**: 
- **tannins**: 

**Mechanism.** A buttercup: the fresh plant’s protoanemonin irritates and blisters, which on a haemorrhoid is a counter-irritant and nothing more; the dried plant loses it and keeps the astringent tannins. The resemblance of its root tubers to piles is the whole of its credential.

**Dose.** The fresh plant blisters skin and mouth; the dried is harmless.

**Standing.** No monograph; in the German tradition as an ointment for haemorrhoids, without trials.

## What lore surrounds it?

Wordsworth’s flower: he wrote three poems to “the small Celandine,”.

## What did the older authorities say?

**Pliny.** Pliny opens his chapter on plants discovered by animals with chelidonia, “by the aid of this plant that the swallow restores the sight of the young birds in the nest.” He knows two kinds; it is the smaller that answers to pilewort: it “has leaves like those of ivy, only rounder and not so white. The juice of it is pungent, and resembles saffron in colour, and the seed is similar to that of the poppy.” Both “blossom, both of them, at the arrival of the swallow, and wither at the time of its departure,” and the juice boiled with Attic honey is “a sovereign remedy for films upon the eyes.”

## Sources

- Grieve, M. (1931). *A Modern Herbal*, “Celandine, Lesser.”
- Culpeper, N. (1652). *The English Physitian*.
- Pliny the Elder, *Natural History* 25.50, trans. J. Bostock & H. T. Riley (1855), Perseus Digital Library.
- Wichtl, M. (2004). *Herbal Drugs and Phytopharmaceuticals*, 3rd ed., “Ficariae herba.”

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*Pilewort.* In *Materia Medica*, edited by B. C. P. Statema. Version 1, revised 2026-10-01. The Thinking Press. https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/pilewort

Historical description, not medical advice.