Not a British native, but established here and there, usually as an escape. The specific name, rapunculus, means a little turnip, and the roots are quite edible, either raw, or sliced in salads, or cooked, when they taste rather like parsnips.
The heroine of one of Grimm’s tales is named Rapunzel, called after the herb, and the tale is woven round the theft of Rampion roots, and there is a Calabrian legend of a village girl who gathered a root in a field and found that the hole left led down to a place in the depths of the earth (Rohde). But this is not a lucky plant, for it is a funeral root, and in Italy there was a supersition that rampion among children gives them a quarrelsome disposition, and may even lead to murder. So, to dream of it is a sign of an impending quarrel (Folkard).
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