I HAVE always been fascinated by the fact that scientists were not the ones who discovered the various benefits of plants.

It was country-based folk many centuries ago who made found out by trial and error.

Perhaps in Britain it was the Druids who discovered the healing powers of plants.

June is the month when the summer solstice focuses attention on Stonehenge and we get all the creepy stories of human sacrifices and magical rituals. Most of the Druid, or Celtic, activities were concerned with the uses of plants both edible and poisonous.

They learned to eat and perhaps even cultivate plants such as the wild cherry and they may have sweetened the rather sour-tasting fruit with honey.

In more recent times the gipsies have forgotten more about the use of plants then some chemists and all supermarkets know.

If you are camping or on a picnic and you have dirty pans to wash you could use a plant called Mare's Tail.

It is common by riversides and is very rough to the touch.

This is because its leaves and stems are full of grains of silicon, which we know better as sand.

Rubbing with Mare's Tail when washing up will be just as effective as any commercially available steel wool or abrasive soap pads.

We should forget most of the bad publicity about Druids and gipsies and think of them as the first and most practical naturalists and biologists of the Living World.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.