Top Medicinal Plants?????

[lannyman8]

Ok, what I would like to know is, what plants have easy identification, what the use is and how abundant they are.....

Im after plants that I could find almost any place within the uk, as I am really bad at plant ident they must be common and really, really easy to identify......

Things im after would be say, Nettles, used for a general pick me up/tonic....

I'd also like to use the plant with out lots of boiling brewing mashing and changes to the plant kept to a minimum, ie, peel the root or mash the leaves is fine, I just dont want to be adding wax and oil and mixing 10 plants together etc... This is so I can do it in the field, and because I CBA to make mixes and buy waxes etc.....

Im after things that will treat things like....

sore throats
cuts
burns
headache
infected cuts/sores
insect bites
colds
and other things the same.......

Any questions please ask me, I will try and exsplain in some sort of English language.....lol....

Thanks.

Chris.........................................

 

[Toddy]

Meadowsweet. Filipendula ulmaria.
I know that the Edwardian pharmacy showed the herbalist using the leaves, but both flourish and roots are better. Just showing the leaves though meant that no one was open to any comeback.

The flourish is a natural aspirin, and it's gentle on the tummy too
Once you know where the plant grows (every damp bit of burn side and field edge around here, I grow it beside one of my small garden ponds) then you can find the roots at any time of year. The roots smell like germolene. They make an truly excellent topical analgesic. Traditionally a little piece was used for toothache and sore throats.

To use the flourish just make it into tea. If you can find lemon balm nearby too (melissa officinalis) add some of that as well.
Can't get any simpler than that.
The root is better used as an ointment, but fresh works.

cheers,
M

 

[lannyman8]

Awesome, thanks Mary, i just need to look it up and see what i can find.......

Chris...

 

[PaulSanderson]

meadowseet is great stuff...grows right by the river here by my house. I knew it was edible, but didnt realise it was a natural painkiller...thanks for the info. I'll utilise this knowledge...

 

[ukbushmonkey]

Weeping Willow bark is a great painkiller, chew the yellowy/green bark and swollow the juice, tastes horrible mate but its good stuff lol I used to use it when doing the walk of shame home back from town when I had a hangover lol this bark can also be applied to cuts.

 

[sandsnakes]

Comfrey has to be on the list.

Note of caution, like most herbs or anything else (alcohol and etc), taken in large continual quantities it can cause liver damage.

Contemporary herbalists view comfrey as an ambivalent and controversial herb that may offer therapeutic benefits but can cause liver toxicity.

One of the country names for comfrey was ‘knitbone’, a reminder of its traditional use in healing bone fractures. Modern science confirms that comfrey can influence the course of bone ailments

The herb contains allantoin, a cell proliferant that speeds up the natural replacement of body cells. Comfrey was used in an attempt to treat a wide variety of ailments ranging from bronchial problems, broken bones, sprains, arthritis, gastric and varicose ulcers, severe burns, acne and other skin conditions. It was reputed to have bone and teeth building properties in children, and have value in treating "many female disorders". Constituents of comfrey also include mucilage, steroidal saponins, tannins, pyrrolizidine alkaloids, inulin, and proteins.


Internal usage of comfrey is now avoided because it contains hepatotoxic pyrrolizidine alkaloids (PAs). Up until 2001 comfery root was used to treat bleeding ulcers and ulcerative conditions of the digestive tract. Use of comfrey can, because of these PAs, lead to veno-occlusive disease (VOD). VOD can in turn lead to liver failure, and comfrey, taken in extreme amounts, has been implicated in at least one death. In 2001, the United States Food and Drug Administration issued a warning against internal usage of herbal products containing comfrey. There are ways to remove the pyrrolizidine alkaloids from comfrey, and some herbal product manufacturers have begun doing so (although the products will still be labelled “for external use only&#8221.

Excessive doses of symphytine, one of the PAs in comfrey, may cause cancer in rats. This was shown by injection of the pure alkaloid. The whole plant has also been shown to induce precancerous changes in rats.

Most recently, in a placebo controlled study comfrey was found to decrease back pain when used topically. However, it is not clear if these results reached statistical significance.

A hot poultice of comfrey roots and leaves can reduce a swollen joint in very short order. I have used it very effectivly on old injuries and sprains.

 

[_mark_]

Can Meadowsweet be used as an anti-inflammatory?

 

[locum76]

The medicinal properties of comfry may be a thing of myth and ledgend - but it does make a great plant food.

(edit: missed out the most vital words)

 

[xylaria]

I used comfrey root on my daughters eczema. I took a parsnip size piece cleaned and peeled it, then put it in the freezer. When it was really bothering her I rubbes the frozen root the effected area. The cold slime was very sothing, it removed the iching sensation and it healed the area for a while. I have made creams with the aerial parts of the plant, I found it the raw plant is handled a lot numbness if the fingers results, it goes away after 24 hours, but there does seem to be a noticable local anesthetic effect.

 

[EdS]

Papaver somniferum still the gold standard in analgesia.

 

[locum76]

Papaver somniferum still the gold standard in analgesia.

You have to be careful who's watching when you process it though.

 

[Toddy]

yep, and the dosage is a bit of a conundrum.....how does one measure the potency without ending up a vegetable ?

Apparantly the seeds, commonly eaten on breads, can be made into a tea or a sugar syrup and give something of the pain easing effect without the narcotic issues haven't tried it tbh.

Catnip is supposedly a really good painkiller too. Used as a tea or smoked like tobacco.

cheers,
M

 

[EdS]

I was thinking it more as the most used plant extract in "modern" medicine. Although Erythroxylum coca is also still used to a greater or lesser extent.

 

[Toddy]

Can Meadowsweet be used as an anti-inflammatory?

Yes, I use it as such
You need to try an allergy test on your skin first.
Then make up a strong enforced oil (soak the cleaned chopped roots in good olive or almond oil, or lard, and let the plant material sit in the mix someplace warm for three weeks. Strain and squeeze through a bit of cheesecloth of clean old tshirt, and then heat the mixture carefully while also melting some beeswax.....you need about a fifth of the weight of beeswax to oil to stiffen the mixture into a cream when the two are mixed together....if the oil's is a bit colder than the melted wax it'll just harden around it and not mix through.
This makes a good paste for soothing swollen joints.
If you can afford it buy shea butter and just use that for the oil and wax, it'll melt in contact with the skin like a massage bar. Messy, but lovely

The flourish can be taken as a tea and used as an anti inflammatory that way. Lots of people with swollen joints also suffer digestive problems, and that's when the topical cream is a very good thing

cheers,
M

 

[firecrest]

anything for migraines? Ive always distrusted herbal painkillers as at least eith conventional ones i know what dosage I need to get rid of a headache, my fear with herbs is that Ill take something that proves ineffective against pain and then be unable to take conventional painkillers through fear of overdose. I remember ray mears once chewing on a stem of some kind of grass (?) for a headache on Tracks

 

[Toddy]

Feverfew for migraine.
It really does work. Bitter as anything, but eat the leaf when the first of the symptoms show and it'll ease it away. Even when the migraine is full blown it's well worth trying to eat some of the feverfew, even through the migraine nausea.
If you can stomach it, make a piece of it with bread and butter and eat it that way.

If you want a plant to grow Lindsey, let me know ? It always, even in this frost and ice, has a leaf or two that's useable, and once you have it in the garden, it'll always pop up somewhere

cheers,
M

 

[silvergirl]

Woundwort (clue in the name)
Anti-septic, just mash up and apply to broken or infected skin, can be used as a poultice too.

Coltsfoot - uses leaves to make into a sort of tea and drink (or inhale fumes) for relief from asthma and other breathing issues.
It has also been burnt/smoked and inhaled that way but you have to be careful what you smoke it with to do any good on the breathing front!
(and I ought to point out that current advice seems to be not to use coltsfoot as it has been linked with liver damage with long term expossure)