Nodding to Janne, as I have no knowledge of tropical climes, do what he recommends.
In the spring I gather fresh yarrow leaves (fronds?). Herbals and foraging books recommend young shoots of whatever as being the tastiest. Because we are interested in secondary metabolites which are usually poisons for some predator of the plant and because young shoots are most at risk, the plant provides us with the best yield of antibacterial compounds in tender shoots.
I include plantain because Youtube. I have no idea whether it is of any use or not. The fibrous strands may be of some use by providing clotting sites. Next year I may omit plantain.
I include tea tree oil because it has documented medicinal properties. I first used olive oil but switched to tea tree oil. If one were to choose another carrier oil, I read a study that found safflower oil was less irritating to the skin than olive oil. If tea tree oil were not a choice, I would use safflower oil.
Beeswax is present to provide the stiffness of the mix. Liquid runs off, wax doesn't spread and spreading stiff wax over a wound hurts. Any wax could provide the desired mechanical qualities. We do bushcraft, so I pick the bushcrafty natural wax.
Gather the materials. Wash the herbage. Blot it dry. Chop it up with your skandi bushcraft knife, or, as I do, use a food chopper. You want to liberate as much of the herbage's intracellular content as you can. Use your carrier oil, sparingly, to help the chopper grind up the plant material.
There are products that grind up plant materials to make vegetable smoothies. I imagine one of those, which liquifies, rather than chops the user's veggies, would be sublime for this purpose. Please report your results.
Once chopped/liquified add the plant material to a heating vessel. We are going to make an oil decoction. I have a wee hot pot that came with my crock pot. It has no temperature regulation, just "off" and "hot". Add less oil than you think you will need. Maybe 1/4 volume of oil to 1 volume of chopped yarrow. Cook it. We want to extract the small to medium molecular weight secondary metabolites. We don't care about proteins, nucleic acids, or the abundant cellulosic structural components of our hash. Someone with lots more patience, or a grant, could find the ideal temperature/time/yield curve. I just take care not to let it boil. Leave the stew on for a couple of hours. If you manage to bleach out the chlorophyll, you left it on too long.
Strain the glop through cheesecloth. Coffee filters and lab filters are too fine.
Now you have an oil decoction. Let it cool, judge the texture, and decide how thick you want it to be. Pour off the oil layer into a clean vessel. (I don't know what the aqueous phase's properties might be.) Re-warm the batch and shave in wax. I have no recommendations regarding the quantity of wax. Some batches were stiffer than others. They all worked.
It looks like this when you're done.
I'm still using the 2016 batch. The wee bottle is my EDC.
I don't know but I've been told
. At least the oil I managed to wring out was green!
