You never walked when you could run in the summertimes of childhood. You had short trousers and knobby knees and the suns shone even more brightly then.

Most of the roads you ran over were untarred gravel roads with a mane of grass down the middle, and a lot of holes  and hollows. You ran pell mell and without care, and so you'd fall maybe once a week.

Because you were as nimble as a farmyard cat you often managed to avoid injury. But every now and again you would smash down on the reddish gravel on your hands and knobby knees and get badly enough cut.

Especially on the hands and knees. You went home crying.

Usually the woman of the house took one quick glance before reacting. There was always hot water in a big pot atop the range.

She would give you a ginger snap biscuit the same color as the wounding gravel to stop you crying. She would wash the wounds with a warm damp cloth. She would coat it with thick Zam Buk ointment.

The stinging would ease soon and you'd be out running again inside the hour. It was the way it was.

But sometimes the velocity of your fall drove gravel and tiny stones deeply into the wound. The woman needed to do more to prevent infection and what we called "beelding" (the same thing really) in our part of the world.

Then the woman would just go outside the door, maybe as far as the front gate, and come back in a minute with a few leaves from one of the most common plants around all houses.

It survived strongly despite being walked upon every day. It was like a tough dock plant. Its leaves, heavily veined on the back, often grew flat against the earth.

It had a spike of white small flowers at this time of year. Neither she nor you ever knew its name.

The woman washed one of the leaves. She then placed it face down on top of the wound.

A cloth bandage kept it in place until the following morning around the knobby knee. The throbbing faded soon.

In the morning the woman took off the bandage.  The green leaf had by then adhered tightly to the afflicted area and was more gray than green.

She used another damp cloth to peel it away without causing too much hurt to the victim. Incredibly, during the night, the leaf had somehow sucked all the shreds of gravel and stone out of the wound.

You could actually see them on its surface. Some of them glinted a bit.

The wound itself looked blanched a bit, but it was clean and disinfected. The mandatory coat of green Zam Buk and you were ready to run again. It was the way it was.

And we never knew the name of the healing plant.

Many times down the years I've been involved in discussions about the old folk cures and remedies. It has always been a warm topic, and we would all relate our experiences.

Apart from that one of the leaf, I will tell of having had bleeding cuts quenched at once by the application of a handful of old cobwebs from the shed, of having sprains treated with eel skins wound around the wrist or ankle -- stinking to high heaven as well! -- of having scalds treated with green cow dung still warm from the cow, of bread poultices for boils and much more.

And I always had difficulty in describing that healing leaf. Everybody knew it, many had been treated by it, but nobody ever knew its name.

"Aye, I know it, it’s like a small dock that grows close to the ground. I know it well but not the name." It's always been that way. 

But not anymore. My friend Matt Murphy of the progressive Sherkin Island Marine Station this week forwarded me a copy of his station's most recent publication. It is worth its weight in gold to countrymen like me who know exactly what all the wild flowers look like, but have not a clue about so many of the names.

It is ridiculous really, but it is a fact. We know the names of about 20 of the most common and beautiful wild flowers, but after that we are lost.

We know the daisy and the primrose, the bluebell and the honeysuckle, the furze and the bramble and the dandelion and the lovely fragile bog cotton.

But what's the name of this big tall yellow lad? Not a notion. And what's the name of that poultice plant I'm walking over now? Dammit if I know.

Thanks to Matt Murphy's splendid beginners’ guide to Ireland's wild flowers I can now identify the magic plant as the Greater Plantain. I can even tell that its proper botanical name is Plantago Major and its Gaelic name is Cuach Phadraig.

Clearly there is a connection with the national saint, and properly so given its healing qualities. Technically I find that it is a nearly hairless perennial with large stalked oval leaves, and that it is one of the toughest and least attractive of our wild flowers.

And there is a photograph of it and, yes, the information that "...in the past the leaves were used to dress and heal wounds!"

I'll vouch for that, and yes again the mystery is solved at last. 

I went out into our garden a while ago armed with my new treasure, and sure I found Cuach Phadraig in a matter of seconds.  And I was highly excited,

I have to add, to be at last able, through the photographs,  to properly identify about everything in sight. I found  purple Tree Mallow and Lords and Ladies, Creeping Buttercups and Lesser Celandines, Common Sorrel, one Ragged Robin, a Bladder Campion on the ditch, a Charlock -- described as a wild mustard -- a Vetch, a Common Ventuary and, dammit, I even identified a Lady's Bedstraw near one of the apple trees.

It has clusters of bright sparky little yellow flowers, sweetly scented and was once used to stuff, mattresses I discover. And it is said it gets its name from the fable that Our Lady  slept upon it in that stable in Bethlehem. 

I could go on and on, but I'll stop here because I want to go out to the garden again and discover much more. There is a plant out there -- I know it by sight -- which is like a small dandelion and which was once used to drive fleas out of infected houses!

And there are four or five that are devouring and digesting small insects even as I write. Fascinating stuff.

If you buy only one book this year and if you were born in Ireland among the thousands of flowers and herbs you never knew the name of, then contact Matt Murphy soonest at www.sherkinmarine.ie and get a copy. It will only cost you about $10 and it is worth its weight in gold.

My Cuach Phadraig is on Page 153.