Herbalism is a craft that is a form of art where one creates healing with medicinal herbs while embracing peace, love, compassion, kindness, and gentleness to all creatures and the environment.
Belle Gibbons
Believing this pretty plant worships the sun because it closes up tightly at night and on cloudy days, the Californians of Spanish heritage call it dormidera, meaning ‘the drowsy one’. They still make a hair tonic by cooking the plant in olive oil. This delightful poppy with its yellow and orange blossoms once blanketed the coastal mountains of California. So impressed by the golden colour of the new land Spanish explorers named the region the Land of Fire. The glorious show of poppies didn’t stop there. Right up until development began on the hills the blanket of poppy blossoms shone so brightly that sailors far out at sea were able to use them as beacons to mark their course.
California poppy was mainly used by the Indians on America’s west coast for pain relief for toothache but they also used it as a poultice for ulcers and sores and as a sedative for insomnia and headache. Today it’s still used as an analgesic and gentle sedative, a use that has been confirmed by research, which shows the plant has low levels of alkaloids known to have sedative effects. Similar to other members of the poppy family the alkaloids are contained in the sap.
In the 1800s settlers introduced the plant in to Australia where, after spreading from gardens, it became naturalized by 1879. Today it’s still favoured by Australians as a garden plant and is widely cultivated throughout the country.
The poppy is a perennial herb that grows up to 60 centimetres. Leaves grow from spreading stems and consist of many blue-green segments that look similar to ferns. Flowers are conspicuous, have many stamens, four petals, and range in colour from a bright yellow to a deep orange. The plant can be found growing wild on hilltops, roadsides and waste places. This beautiful flower is the state flower of California.
A member of the daisy (Asteraceae) family chicory is also commonly known as coffeeweed, succor, and blue-sailors. Its attractive sky-blue flowers open and close at the same time every day, a characteristic noted by the Swedish botanist, Carolus Linnaeus, who included chicory in the floral clock he planted at the Swedish city, Uppsala. Since then the plant is often grown in floral clocks around the world but the opening times of its flowers vary because they relate to latitude. However, regardless of where they’re grown they always close five hours after they open and the leaves always align with the north. Another interesting characteristic of the plant’s flowers is their ability to change from their normal blue colour to bright red when they come in contact with the acid of ants. Although chicory is used for both food and medicine it’s probably most commonly known these days as a caffeine-free substitute for coffee.
Folklore and Magical Uses
I’m always fascinated with the folk tales that give the reason for a plant’s characteristics and the one explaining the colour of chicory’s flowers is poignant. Apparently the lovely clear blue chicory flowers are the transformed eyes of a young lass who wept for her lover’s ship that never returned. Perhaps this folklore is the basis for chicory’s magical use of carrying it to help one forget a lover. The herb is also used in combination with cinquefoil and clove to make a vision incense.
Medicinal Uses
Although chicory was used in ancient times by the Romans who prescribed it for liver conditions it wasn’t until centuries later that it was recommended by herbalists as a diuretic, tonic, and laxative. They also used it to treat inflammations and swellings by making a poultice from the bruised leaves. According to the philosophy of the Doctrine of Signatures chicory’s milky sap helped to increase nursing mother’s milk. Today some herbalists use the herb to treat indigestion, gallstones, anorexia, constipation, hepatitis, fluid retention,rheumatism, and gout. Chicory is valuable as a tonic because it contains Vitamins A, B, C, K, and P.
It has many similarities to dandelion but although it is valued as a medicinal herb in Europe it doesn’t have the same importance as dandelion in traditional British herbalism.
Medicinal Adult Dosage
Suggested dose of the juiced fresh root: 10 – 15 ml three times daily
Decoction: 8 – 12 g of the root three times daily
Other Uses
Generally used more as food than medicine these days, the young leaves of cultivated and wild chicory are gathered in spring and used in salads while the older leaves can be cooked as a vegetable but they do have a bitter taste. Just as with dandelion root the chicory root can be washed, sliced, gently dried then roasted and ground to make a pleasant substitute for coffee. It has a pleasant bitter taste and contains no caffeine so it can be drunk on its own or blended with coffee to reduce its stimulating effect. The buds can be pickled and the chicons can be fried gently in butter as vegetable dish. Chicons are blanched leaf heads produced by digging up the chicory roots, replanting them in a dark cellar, and letting them grow until the small pale heads are several centimeters high.
Herb Description and Habitat
Chicory is a perennial with blue flowers borne at the bases of the small leaves on a rough stiff stem that grows from a rosette of leaves on the ground. The plant usually grows to a height of 90 cm but can grow up to 150 cm. It has a tough and long taproot that allows it to grow and survive in areas that are harsh to other plants. Native to Europe, North Africa, and West Asia chicory is naturalized in different parts of the world including Australia and New Zealand where it grows in fields, cultivated and waste land, and along roadsides.
Cultivation and Harvesting
The herb is grown from seed, self sows and germinates easily. Transplant about 30 cm apart when the plants are young and cut flowering stems back in autumn. It can also be grown by digging up the clumps in autumn, dividing the roots with a crown, and replanting them. It is frost and drought resistant. The roots are used for herbal medicine and are dug during autumn in the second year of growth. It’s a fairly inconspicuous plant until the flowers begin to appear in summer.
A member of the myrtle family (myrtacea) the clove tree was so popular in the Far East spice islands in the early sixteen hundreds that it was the cause of bitter trade wars between European nations. This resulted in Holland gaining a monopoly after destroying all the trees apart from those growing on an island they owned, Ambon. The monopoly was eventually broken in the last half of the eighteenth century by the French who smuggled cloves out of the East Indies and introduced the plant to the islands of the Indian Ocean and the New World. By the start of the nineteenth century there were plantations of clove trees in many tropical islands. Today major producers included Jamaica, Sri Lanka, Zanzibar (now part of Tanzania), and Indonesia.
Cloves have pain-relieving and antiseptic qualities, which made it popular in folk medicine. For generations dentists, herbalists, and folk healers have recommended cloves or the oil of cloves for toothache. The essential oil is rich in eugenol and eugenyl acetate and is used by dentists for fillings and to help numb the gums prior to giving injections before extractions or other painful dental work.
Cloves are the dried unopened flower buds of a rain forest tree, which is a close relative of lilly pillies that are native to Australia and include some varieties that have clove-scented fruits and leaves.The warm and pungent scent of cloves makes it a popular additive to lotions, toothpastes and soaps.
Cloves as a Herbal Remedy Clove tea can be made by infusing ten cloves in a cup (250ml) of boiling water for ten minutes. Take as required to allay nausea and vomiting and to stimulate the digestive system. Alternatively one or two drops can be taken on a lump of sugar. Fungal infections such as ringworm and athlete’s foot can be healed by applying clove tincture.
Parts Used
Essential oil and flower buds.
Actions
Anodyne, antiseptic, antispasmodic, carminative, stimulant, and prevents vomiting.
Caution Always take the recommended dose of the essential oil, avoid it during pregnancy and don’t use it on babies and children. Cloves is best avoided altogther during pregnancy.
I doubt there would be a professional herbalist without cleavers in the dispensary. Its medicinal properties make it very useful for treating cystitis, oedema, psoriasis, and eczema. Externally it’s used to treat burns and abrasions. Historically cleavers or goosegrass, as it’s popularly known, was an ingredient in a broth made to be eaten as an aid to losing weight and an infusion of the shoots that are rich in vitamin C was taken as a spring tonic. It was also used to treat scurvy (it is still valuable today in the treatment of vitamin C deficiencies), scrofula, jaundice, kidney stones, urinary obstructions, and cancer. It was a popular treatment for staunching bleeding both internally and externally. An ointment made from cleavers was applied to hard swellings in the throat and the juice was applied as drops to treat earache. It was also used externally to treat sunburn, remove freckles, counter the bites of venomous creatures, and to heal ‘green’ and old wounds.
Just like dandelion and chicory roots, cleavers can be used as a caffeine-free coffee substitute but its seeds are used instead of the root and are lightly roasted before being ground. In fact cleavers is a member of the large madder family, which makes it a relative of coffee.
A native of North America and Eurasia, cleavers grows widely in southern Australia. Because it prefers to grow in hidden places such as thickets it can be hard to find. It forms dense mats and the bristles on its leaves and stems enable it to cling to neighbouring plants. It has no trouble populating other areas because it self sows and the white flowers produce bristly fruits that cling to the fur of passing animals from where they drop off to start new colonies. This practice is why the plant was given its other common name, catchweed.
Cleavers prefers rich loamy soils in waste places, cultivated areas, and gardens but is tolerant of most soils and situations. Although it’s drought tender it is frost resistant. The whole herb can be used and is harvested from spring to summer while flowering or in fruit.
The herb is a sprawling annual (some say weed but as a herbalist this makes me cringe) that is weak-stemmed and forms prickly and dense mats over any plants that grow nearby. The stems are bristly and square, grow up to 150 centimetres, and bear whorls of lance-shaped prickly leaves. The small white flowers appear from spring to summer and produce bristled fruits that are about one centimetre across.
The actions of cleavers are mild astringent, diuretic, and it’s a wonderful lymphatic alterative which means it cleans toxins from the lymphatic system.
Dosage – three times daily
Infusion of dried herb – 2 to 4 grams
Juice of the fresh herb – 5 to 15 ml
Tincture 1:5 – 4 to 10 ml
Also known as bachelor’s-button, bluebottle, and hurtsickle, cornflower is a member of the daisy family (Asteraceae) and is an old favourite that has many varieties and colours, which makes it an attractive garden plant. As for medicinal qualities it’s the familiar bright blue cornflower, Centaurea cyanus (commonly known as blue bachelor’s button), that’s used. According to folklore, the herb improves eyesight and a decoction of the dried flowers was used to treat eye inflammations.The leaves were juiced and applied to wounds and steeped in wine to treat fevers of pestilent diseases. Research indicates that cornflowers may have some effect as an astringent (an agent that contracts biological tissue and therefore stops bleeding) because of its tannin content but there’s little evidence to support its effect in treating fevers.
Cornflower’s Latin name is derived from a mythical centaur that was worshipped as the father of medicine by the Ancient Greeks and one of its common names, hurtsickle, comes from English farmers who considered it a weed and blunted their sickles when cutting the tough stem.
Native to the Mediterranean, cornflower is completely naturalized in England and widely cultivated in Australia although it does escape from gardens at times. It can be found growing wild in waste ground, roadsides and fields.
The herb is an annual that is easily cultivated and has a wiry, erect downy stem that grows to a height of 30 to 60 centimetres. Brilliant blue solitary thistle-like flower heads appear at the ends of branches from spring to summer and the greyish-green long alternate, lance-shaped leaves are downy like the stem.
Cornflowers are popularly used in dried flower arrangements because they retain their beautiful colour when dried. A blue ink can be made by mixing the juice from the flower with alum water but the colour doesn’t work well as a cloth dye.
Whatever its uses the herb has a place in the English language because its name has been taken to describe incredibly blue eyes – cornflower blue.
Also known as vervain, vervein, blue-top, European verbein, and purple-top, verbena is native to North Africa, West Asia, and to Europe but is well naturalised in other countries including Australia and New Zealand. The herb can be found growing wild in such places as roadsides, waste places, river banks, open pastures, and paddocks.
Although verbena is a common plant and is rather plain it has been highly regarded since ancient times. It was consecrated by the Romans so they could purify their homes and temples. They also used it for medicinal purposes including the treatment of diarrhoea and snakebite and chewed the leaves and roots to help strengthen their teeth and gums.
In medieval times verbena was used as a charm against the evil spells of witch’s, which seems a little strange because it was also an ingredient in their love potions. One of the most sacred herbs of the Druid’s, the herb even found its way in to Christianity as the plant that was used to stop the bleeding of Christ’s wounds after he was crucified at Calvary.
In the early days of white settlement in Australia, the herb was used to treat consumption and strengthen the stomach; it was also used by the Aborigines to treat venereal disease.
Over time verbena gained a reputation for treating almost anything but was mainly used to treat skin infections, colds, nervous conditions, fevers, and gout. Today herbalists use the herb as a sedative, antispasmodic, tonic, diuretic, astringent, diaphoretic, and aphrodisiac. Pharmacologists have found evidence that the plant is effective as a diuretic and as a treatment for gout.
Identification Verbena is a perennial herb that grows to a height of 30-60 centimetres and has erect, stiff, thin stems. It has opposite leaves with those lower on the stems being oblong and toothed while the upper leaves are lobed, slender, and lance-shaped. Small lilac flowers have five petals and are borne on a slender spike from spring to autumn.
Dosage Gather verbena at or just before flowering. Make an infusion of 2-4 grams of the herb and take three times a day.
Because all plantains have high tannin and mucilage content they have similar medicinal properties. One of their important medicinal qualities is their soothing effect, which is due to mucilage so the herb is useful in the treatment of cystitis. Tannin is contained in the leaves of the Plantago family so they are astringent, which means herbal medicine made from the leaves will draw tissues together and help to stop bleeding. Other conditions plantain treats include prostatitis, and haematuria. Externally the leaves are applied to wounds including those that are slow to heal, haemorrhoids, as an eyewash for conjunctivitis and blepharitis, and as a mouthwash for mouth inflammations and ulcers.
Historically, the plant has been used to stop bleeding from many areas of the body including the digestive, reproductive, and urinary tracts, and the lungs. It was also used to treat the stings of nettles and insects, to cool hot conditions such as gout, fevers, and burns; coughs due to heat, worms, and ague. The powdered seeds were given to treat liver obstructions, vomiting, lethargy, jaundice, and even epilepsy.
Referred to as the ‘mother of herbs’ in an old Anglo-Saxon magical poem – ‘Carts creaked over you, queens rode over you, brides bridled over you, bulls breathed over you, all these you withstood, so may you withstand poison and infection’ – plantain has been a valued medicinal herb for centuries. It was so highly regarded by Europeans that settlers took the herb with them to America where the Indians began to use the leaves for some conditions such as an eyewash for sore eyes.
Plantain can be found growing wild in fields, lawns, and waste places. Although native to Eurasia both Plantago major and Plantago lanceolata are naturalized in different parts of the world including Australia and New Zealand.
Common plantain, Plantain major, is an annual or perennial that grows to 30 or 60 centimetres high. Its leaves are formed as a rosette and are long-stalked and oval. Flowers are white tinged with green to greenish-brown and are borne in spikes. P. lanceolata is a perennial that grows to a similar height to P. major and has finely toothed leaves that are lance shaped and narrow and white flowers tinged with green.
Often considered as weeds, the plantains seed freely and are generally not cultivated but can be transplanted in to the garden, a practice that is very worthwhile for those interested in medicinal herbs and herbal medicine.
Adults can take an infusion of 2 to 4 gram of dried leaves three times a day.
Also known as Ant Bush, senna is a member of the pea family (Fabaceae), which is understandable because it has long thin pods that contain the seeds. Originating from Arabic the word, senna, has been used since medieval times or even earlier for medicinal plants that belong to the large Cassia genus. In the first century Dioscorides used the name Cassia for one of the senna plants but it originated from the Hebrew word qase’ah, which might have referred to an unrelated plant.
Senna has long been known as a laxative, which is an action caused from compounds called anthraquinones that are found in almost the whole plant but are quite concentrated in the seeds. When taken in excess anthraquinones are toxic so any overuse of preparations made from senna should be avoided.
The herb is probably the most ancient herbal remedy still used in Western pharmacy that has mostly synthetic drugs. Laxative products made from senna probably come from different species with common names that reflect their different locations, the most likely being Tinnevelly senna (Cassia angustifolia) and Alexandrian senna (Cassia acutifolia). Other senna plants include Aleppo senna, Mecca senna, Tripoli senna, Senegal senna, and Bombay senna. An exception to this tradition is coffee senna, which is native to the Americas.
Description and Habitat The herb is an annual, shrubby plant that grows up to two metres high and has pinnate leaves
that are made up of three to five pairs of pointed leaflets that are 3 – 5 entimetres long and ovate. Short sprays of cup-shaped yellow flowers terminate the branches and appear in summer. They are about 2 centimetres across and give way to thin cylindrical pods.
Although it’s native to tropical and North America coffee senna can be found well naturalised in waste ground and disturbed areas in many sub-tropical and tropical areas of the world including Australia where it’s mostly confined to the coastal regions of the Northern Territory, northwestern Australia, and Queensland.
Uses and Properties
Dried green pods and leaves are used as laxatives and can be taken in the form of syrups, tincutres or infusions.
Cautions
Excessive or too freqent doses can cause symptoms of liver damage. There have been reports of senna poisoning cattle. Do not take this herb in cases of abdominal pain of unknown origin, appendicitis, intestinal obstructions, inflammatory bowel disease, or during pregnacy or lactation.
This delightful wild herb, twiggy mullein or wand mullein(Verbascum virgatumStokes),is a member of the Verbascum species and is similar in appearance to great mullein (Verbascum thapsus). It can be found growing in low grassland, woodland, rocky outcrops, warm temperate rainforest, alpine and sub-alpine regions in many parts of the world.
The image shown here was taken on my property in southeast Queensland, Australia. There are no known medicinal uses for the herb, however, moth mullein (Verbascum blattaria L.), which is similar to virgatum, can be used as an insect repellent.
There are around 300 species of mullein throughout the world. Some of them have been used in natural medicine for centuries and are among the oldest known medicinal plants. Although mulleins have traditionally been used to treat inflammation of the pelvic area, kidneys,and respiratory tract they’ve mostly been used for the treatment of respiratory conditions such as bronchitis and asthma, and the pain associated with earache. External conditions such as ulcers and haemorrhoids were treated with poultices made from mullein leaves.
The only member of the Verbascum species I would use medicinally is Verbascum thapsus because it is well documented and its efficacy and safety have been proved empirically. It’s a valuable medicinal herb and one I would never be without in my dispensary.
Despite its many attributes English couch grass is much despised by Australian farmers and some gardeners who rue the day the plant was introduced from Europe. Although it’s almost impossible to eradicate couch grass because of its very strong rhizomes that grip to the soil it is very beneficial in preventing soil erosion. Other useful purposes the plant has also come from the rhizomes that are rich in carbohydrates. They are used as a nutritious fodder for cattle and after being dried and ground have been used as a flour substitute in times of famine. When dried and roasted the rhizomes have also been used as a coffee substitute while an infusion made from the fresh rhizomes has been used in the treatment of urinary complaints and as a diuretic.
Long considered a very useful medicinal herb by herbalists the plant is still prescribed by them today. In fact H. P. Rasmussen, a herbalist in Australia’s colonial days, recommended a decoction of the plant to be taken by those suffering from ‘impure blood’. He described it as a
blood purifier, one of the uses herbalists still use it for and find it extremely effective. It’s also very effective for soothing, calming pain, and easing spasms in the urinary tract.
Also known as creeping dogstooth grass, quack grass, quick grass, rope twitch, and twitch, English couch grass can be found growing in pastures, cultivated fields, and waste land. It’s common in southeastern and southwestern Australia.
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