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!

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.