Rosa sinensis is said to be an astringent and the roots contain mucilage which helps to sooth the mucous membranes lining the digestive and respiratory tracts. The seeds act as a stimulant and are said to be effective for cramps and in some parts of Asia women make a decoction from the bark to help restore normal menstruation.

The tea is also a popular diuretic and contains Vitamin C and health giving minerals. In 2008 a USDA study showed hibiscus tea lowers blood pressure – the data supports the idea that drinking the tea as part of a normal diet may play a role in controlling blood pressure although more research is needed. 

In Ayurveda medicine the roots of rosa sinensis are believed to cure coughs, and hair loss or graying.

Hibiscus tea is slightly tart and blends well with other teas while adding a warm pinkish colour. To make the tea pour 250ml boiling water over one teaspoon of dried blossoms or 3 teaspoons of chopped fresh blossoms and allow it to infuse for ten minutes. 

Isn’t this caterpillar a beauty? It was nibbling away in one of our olive trees; although these trees are precious to us we just left it and it did very little damage. I have no idea what type of caterpillar it is but thought it was very attractive. 

Do you know there are over one hundred species of roses and many of them have medicinal properties? Many gardens include the common red rose which has long been a favourite in European folk medicine. 

Dried petals are infused to treat dizziness and headache and when combined with honey (added as a sweetener) the infusion is used as a blood purifier and nerve and heart tonic. A decoction of rose petals helps to treat mouth sores while a decoction made with wine helps to rejuvenate a tired body, ease uterine cramps and as a mouthwash  helps to relieve toothache. A cold compress made from the wine decoction and placed on the forehead will relieve  headache and a a few drops of the warmed decoction in the ear will help with earache. Rose honey is an ancient remedy for sore throat and an old remedy for headache is cloths soaked in rose vinegar and placed on the forehead. A tincture made from roses is also said to be very helpful for mild depression. 

Other roses can be used medicinally but red roses are said to be the best for medicinal uses. Don’t you just love nature? There are so many gardens growing red roses in the world yet so few people know of the plant’s medicinal properties. 

 Harvesting herbs on a glorious day is one of the most pleasant activities for a herbalist. Today was one of those days – blue skies with a few scattered clouds, cool breeze and lots of the most delightful birdsong. Above is my last harvest of comfrey leaves until Spring brings forth a burst of new growth packed full of the most remarkable healing properties.

And here is the fruit of my labour, the most wonderful comfrey ointment – organic and full of incredible healing properties and oh so very rewarding.

Some time ago one of my daughters asked me to look after  her potted lemon balm because she was relocating. Without thinking we put the pot near the carport, a perfect location for it (or so we thought) with only the morning sun. Because the pot is very heavy that’s where it stayed being watered and fertilized regularly. Not so long ago I wanted to use lemon balm as an ingredient in an ointment I was making. My plants needed to recover from regular pruning for infusions so I thought I’d use my daughter’s plant. Before I harvested it I realized the pot was right beside the car and the leaves would have absorbed the exhaust fumes. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of this when we put it there. 

Potted Lemon Balm

The solution is to move the plant to a new and suitable location, prune it back completely so new growth will be free of toxins and before using it let it grow for quite some time allowing watering and rainfall to flush any remaining toxins out of the plant tissue. 

Any herbs that are established along driveways and fences beside roads or anywhere cars travel and where they are near other environmental toxins are best left where they are and used only as a garden plant. It’s much better to obtain new plants and locate them in an area of your land that is as free of toxins as possible. 

Also, never collect herbs growing along the roadside or herbs planted in gardens such as those in supermarket carparks. Rosemary is one such herb that is now popularly used for landscaping and, in fact, is growing as a border along the carpark at a shopping complex in a town not too far from me.

This is our first frangipani flower for the season, such a wonderful example of Mother Nature’s perfection. Frangipani trees are very hardy and drought resistant, in fact they don’t like too much water so they are ideal for many parts of Australia, some varieties even grow in cooler areas. We have very cold winters with frost but this doesn’t seem to damage our trees as they drop their leaves in winter anyway, even in the tropical north. The perfume of these flowers reminds me of my childhood – I grew up in North Queensland on a farm near the beach and summers were filled with the perfume of mango, frangipani, and quisqualis blossoms. 

Frangipani trees are very easy to propagate all you need to do is cut off a piece of hardwood about 30 centimetres (one foot) long in winter when there is the least sap and leave it in the sun for a couple of weeks to dry out. If it looks like rain take it indoors then place it back in the sun when it’s dry again. Plant it in potting mix and in a few weeks it will  have formed roots. 

These unusual looking trees with large green leaves and beautiful flowers suit old and modern homes and are a great addition to water-wise gardens.

Homemade Wholemeal Bread

I’ve never had many kitchen appliances but as I’ve gotten older and busier I find some of them  are indeed time savers and a great help.

My husband and I much prefer making our own bread but it does take time and effort and we certainly don’t have the time. For years we toyed with the idea of buying a breadmaker but heard on the grape vine that they only made small loaves so we thought there was no point bothering with one. Just after Christmas some bread we had bought at a local bakery tasted a little strange so we decided to check out the breadmakers again and low and behold they now make loaves in three sizes, 750 gram, 1kg, and 1.25kg so we bought one. It was the best thing we ever did as far as having delicious, wholesome, healthy and fresh bread. 

It’s so easy to make a loaf, all we do is plonk the ingredients in, press a couple of buttons and in a few hours we have the aroma of fresh baked bread in our kitchen and delicious bread that we know has no unpleasant ingredients. 

Fresh Wholemeal Bread with Cherry Jam,

It’s hard to resist fresh warm bread with butter and cherry jam. The breadmaker we bought comes with a recipe book which includes herb and garlic bread, and rye bread. It has a fruit and nut dispenser and also makes cakes and jams. I’ve already made sun-dried tomatoe and olive bread – delicious!

Flat Leaf Parsley Seeds

It’s easy to collect the seeds; all you need to do is wait until they’re fully matured and harvest them first thing in the morning before the sun is on them but when the dew has dried. Hold a well-opened packet or envelope under the seeds and using scissors or secateurs, snip the stalk so it falls in. After you have the seeds in the envelope or packet you can remove them from the stalk without losing any.  Although some plants can take a while to produce seeds after flowering just as the above flat leaf parsley has, it’s well worth the wait. 

Gold, Frankincense, and Myrrh

How much do you know about Frankincense and Myrrh apart from them being precious gifts given to the baby Jesus by the Three Wise Men?

Being so close to Christmas I thought I’d write about the wonderful healing powers of these herbs which were very valuable in ancient times. The very fact that gold was also a part of the Three Wise Men’s gift to Jesus verifies just how precious these herbs were. 

Frankincense (Boswellia thurifera, B. Carterii) is the resin tapped from the Boswellia tree of which there are numerous species and varieties with each one producing slightly different types of resin. The more opaque the resin the better the quality. 

Traded in North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula for more than 5,000 years, Frankincense is usually used in the form of incense or essential oil which is obtained by steam distillation of the dry resin and is used in aromatherapy and perfumery. Good quality Frankincense that has no impurities is edible and is used in Asia to promote healthy skin and aid digestion. We herbalists prescribe Boswellia serrata for inflammatory conditions including arthritis, rheumatic disorders, ulcerative colitis, and pulmonary diseases.

In aromatherapy Frankincense essential oil is used to treat asthma, catarrhal problems, urinary tract infections, and to cleanse ulcers and wounds. It’s also valuable as a uterine tonic during labour and is said to help slow wrinkles.

Burn the incense to help nervous people, especially those who seem to be highly strung, and to help focus on the present rather than the past. 

Caution: Not to be used directly on the skin as it can cause irritation.

Myrrh (Commiphora molmol) belongs to the same family as Frankincense – Burseraceae or Torchwood family – and is the resin taken from a shrub or low tree that grows wild in Ethiopia, the Arabian peninsula and Somalia. 

It’s a most wonderful anti-microbial herb from which a tincture or liquid extract is made and used to treat respiratory conditions. It also has a major role in treating external conditions such as sinusitis, tonsillitis, fungal infections, and abrasions and inflammations. Sinusitis can be treated by applying the liquid extract over the sinuses and tonsillitis can be treated by gargling a mouthwash made from 5ml of the tincture in a glass of water.

Throughout history Myrrh has been popularly used as an anti-microbial, an antibiotic for preserving wine,  an embalming agent, and to treat infected teeth, infections of the skin and mouth, coughs, worms, and chronic catarrh.

Given the health benefits of Frankincense and Myrrh the Three Wise Men were very wise indeed when they gave these gifts to the infant Jesus. Now I’m wondering if Mary ever used them to treat Jesus for any ailments. 

Merry Christmas and a wonderful New Year to you all.

Belle

Author, tutor and proprietor of

The Home Herbalist Courses and website. 

The more research I do the more I learn about how unhealthy our food has become over the years. Hidden food additives that we are unaware of, unhealthy raising of animals and chickens in factory farming, growth hormones in cattle, eggs from unnaturally raised chickens  kept in cages – the list goes on.

I’m a vegetarian, however, the rest of my family and many of my patients aren’t so I have good cause to be concerned about the foods they are eating. Most of us purchase our food without a thought as to where it comes from or what it really contains. We do this because we trust our Government and laws that are supposed to protect us but they don’t. Most food labelling doesn’t tell us what we need to know because of slack laws and loopholes in the laws.

I have a story I would like to share with you which will help you realize that trusting our food source is not enough, we must do our best to find out what we’re actually eating.

For almost four years my little female cat had epilepsy seizures, usually about one a week and sometimes more. All this time I had been trying to find out what was causing it but in the meantime I had her on herbal medicine to try and control it. When a seizure was beginning I would do Bowen Therapy on her and give her the Australian Bush Flower Emergency Essence. Sometimes this helped but most often it didn’t and she would still have to go through the whole process. She is an elderly cat – just turned 20 in September – so I thought it could be late-onset feline epilepsy which is not uncommon. The seizures don’t hurt her but they are horrible for her (and me) to experience.

About five months ago I noticed my little cat hadn’t had a seizure for about a month and then she started having them again. I thought about what I had done differently for her and then the penny dropped. My animals have always had a natural diet but when my cat got old and her teeth became weak I began giving her good quality tinned food for the vitamins she needed as well as continuing with fresh meat that I cut up very finely for her so she could eat it.  At the beginning of her seizure-free period I realized I had discontinued the fresh meat which was barbecue steak purchased from the local supermarket. Then after about a month of not giving it to her I felt she was missing it so bought some more for her and cut it finely as usual. The seizures began again and they continued for about a week until I realized it must be something in the meat so I stopped giving it to her and her seizures ceased. I also realized I had been buying it from the same place for the four years she’s had the seizures.

I questioned the supermarket butcher about the problem and he assured me they don’t put any preservatives in the meat at all. Following this I went to a private butcher and asked him about the mince he sells and he assured me he doesn’t put any preservatives in the mince so I bought some to try. My cat ate some that night and had a seizure about 11pm and one again at 2am. I immediately threw the meat out. That was around four months ago and she hasn’t had any fresh meat since then and she’s had no seizures since then.

I questioned both butchers again and told them what had happened and they still insisted they don’t put preservatives in the meat they sell or the mince. So I began researching what is actually in our beef in Australia and all I have found out so far is that some of our cattle have implants containing hormonal growth promotants which are placed under the skin at the back of the ear and slowly release a low dosage to the animal. These hormonal growth promotants (HGPs) are approved and regulated by the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority which, according to Food Standards Australia New Zealand,  ensures they are safe for consumers, not harmful to animals and effective when used according to label instructions.

Why are HGPs used? Food Standards Australia New Zealand says they are used to improve the efficiency in cattle converting stockfeed into meat so cattle can be processed earlier with less stock feed being consumed. They also say these HGPs applied to cattle contain naturally occurring hormones (oestrogen, progesterone, and testosterone) or synthetic hormones (trenbolone acetate and zeranol). 

According to the European Commission the use of zeranol for growth promotion in food animals was banned in the EU in 1985. So why is it still allowed in Australia? If the butchers are telling me the truth and are not adding preservatives to the meat they sell then there must be something in the meat causing my cat to have the seizures.  Without having her tested I can only surmise at what may be the cause or causes. Apart from hormone growth promotants there has been evidence over the years of beef being contaminated with pesticides and other harmful chemicals so any one or more of these may be causing the problem. All I know is that the meat I’ve given her has definitely caused the seizures.

I’ve replace the meat with fresh fish that I cook for her and she still has the tinned food for her vitamins. She’s a very healthy girl and still enjoys life. However, the experience I’ve had with my cat and her seizures has made me try even harder to give my family organic food which is not easy to obtain in our area. This experience has made me think of a number of health problems that are on the increase such as obesity, autism, ADHD, cancer and so on. Could the obesity epidemic be partly related to the hormone growth promotants? Could autism and ADHD be partly related to hidden chemicals and hormones in our food? What about diabetes and cancer? What we are eating is certainly food for thought!

Until next time stay healthy, happy and most of all, wise.

Belle

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