plantain

Well, we had a couple of lovely spring -like days this week. Although Tuesday I was recovering from St Patrick’s Day celebrations I still had to get out and make the most of the beautiful weather. The sky was azure and there wasn’t a cloud to be seen – at least for a couple of hours! So out I went with my trug and picked a load of plantain (Plantago lanceolata). It’s still a bit early for it but it didn’t take too long to find enough to make a couple of litres of 2:5 tincture. It needs to be 2:5 as I was using it fresh – you have to take into acount the volume of water present in the plants.

I use quite a lot of plantago in my practice. It is very useful for catarrhal conditions especially of the respiratory tract but alos for the digestive and urinary tracts. I use a lot of it during the hayfever season as you can imagine. It helps to dry up secretions without compromising the mucous membranes.

It is a good astringent herb making it useful as a vulnerary. It will stop bleeding and the long laceolate leaves make a natural ‘plaster’ if you cut yourself out in the wilds. The leaves are also demulcent making it very soothing for irritated skin conditions where the tannins will also help reduce inflammation.

It’s always been one of my favourate herbs ever since, as a child, I use to pull out the ‘ribs’and chew on them as ‘chinese chewing gum’ !

That’s all for this week folks!

Solomons seal

I had a lovely weekend with celebrating international womens day last Saturday, then onto a party and on Sunday we headed off to an Open Day at a lovely garden centre – The Secret Garden; tucked away in the wilds between Newmarket and Kanturk in north Cork. I had a stall there, talking to people about herbs and how to use them and selling a few herbs and remedies. I met some lovely people. Smoss, my husband, took a snooze in the car – he was still recovering from the party! I think I spent more than I made through buying seeds and plants etc. I bought myself a solomons seal plant that I had been reading about in ‘The book of Herbal Wisdom’ by Matthew Wood. Solomons seal is primarily used for joint injuries – especialy where the soft tissue has been damaged through strains and sprains. It is supposed to be very useful in cartilage injuries and may help with bone ’spurs’. It can also be used as a mucous membrane tonic particularly for the female reproductive system where it may help with leucorrhoea and vaginitis as well as prolapses and supporting the pelvis in general.

I think I would like to get to know this herb better and I’m looking forward to making its aquaintance when it wakes up from its winter sleep.

Atrocities against women

I came across an article in ‘The Women’s Voice’- the newsletter of Tralee Women’s Resource Centre, which made me feel sick to the stomach. Apparently it was in the Irish Independant newspaper. A 19yr old woman has been sentanced to 200 lashes and 6 months in jail in Suadi Arabia for being gang raped!!!  The sentance was justified because she had been travelling with a male companion when she was pulled from the car. This apparently is against the law there. Even if we accept such a stupid and idiotic law as an ínternal’ matter, when has breaking one law been seen as justifying another crime to be committed against that person – especially such a serious insulting and injurous crime. The sentance also is appalling. My own daughter is nearly 19 and I still think of her as a child (yes, I know that’s my problem) but to imaging a girl her age being whipped 200 times just turns my stomach – well to be truthful , I daren’t think of it. I also wonder – if she survives her ‘punishment’ what does life hold for her in 6 months time. will her family take her back and suppport her? – I hope so. , she’ll be in dire need of it.

Sorry to write such a depressing post but I just had to try and get this out of my system.

I think I might join Amnesty International as well.

Liquorice

I started off some liquorice tincture last week. I decocted the liqorice root, having cut it up as small as possible (my coffee grinder couldn’t cope) and then added the alcohol. It is now macerating until next week. It’s looking very good so far.

Liquorice is great for so many things and is one of the herbs I use most of. It’s a legume – like peas- but we use the root or rhyzomes which contain the sweet glycerides. It is a very good anti-inflammatory herb for the stomach so can be used to help soothe the stomach lining in the stomach as well as the digestive tract further down. It is an excellent herb for coughs as it both soothes sore throats and acts as an expectorant which means it will promote a productive cough. It contains steroid like substances which mimic our own and so can be used to help the adrenal glands during or after periods of stress. It also has an oestrogenic -like action making it useful for hormonal imbalances as in menopause or with PMT.

I’m keeping an eye on the Plantago lanceolata in the garden. It is starting to wake up but it needs a bit more warm sunshine to be ready to harvest. I’ll let you know when I get going on that.

Introduction

Hi. I would just like to introduce myself. My name is Chris and I’m a Medical Herbalist. I have been practising in the south west of Ireland for 5 years. I grow some of the herbs I use and collect some from the wild. I hope to talk about these on my blog. I see people with a wide range of health problems and treat them using individual herbal formulas which I dispense from my clinic in Tralee. I hope you will enjoy reading my posts and that you will add any comments you wish to make. 

     

  This is one of my herb beds.