Marshmallow

Botanical Name: Althaea officinalis L.

Family: Malvaceae (Mallow family)

Other Names: Marsh Mallow · Althea · Mallards · Mortification Root · Guimauve

Parts Used: The root chiefly. The leaves and flowers are used as well.

Quick Look

Marshmallow is the soft, velvety mallow of the salt marsh, and its root is the herbalist's great soother. Soaked in cold water it gives a thick, slippery drink that cools and coats whatever is hot, dry and sore. Reach for it for a dry, tickling cough, a raw throat, a burning stomach, a painful bladder, and as a poultice for burns, wounds and swellings.

Actions, Energetics & Taste

How It's Been Used

Dry cough & hoarseness. One of the best herbs for dry, irritated airways, especially dry, unproductive, tickly coughs. The old physicians gave it for hoarseness, bronchitis and whooping cough.

Sore throat. The cold tea, sipped or gargled, coats and cools a raw throat.

Stomach & bowels. Used for heartburn, a sour or inflamed stomach, ulcers and colitis. It lays a protective coat over sore linings and gives them time to heal. It eases dry constipation, and the old physicians also gave it in dysentery and diarrhea.

Bladder & kidneys. The old physicians valued it in nearly every complaint of the kidneys and bladder. It is taken for hot, painful urination, bladder infections, and gravel and stones.

Burns, wounds & swellings. As a poultice the root was laid on painful swellings from wounds, bruises, burns, scalds or poisons. It was called Mortification Root because it was trusted to keep a wound from turning to gangrene. A compress of it was put on painful piles.

Dryness. Herbalists think of it wherever the tissues are hot and dry.

Food. The Romans ate it as food, and French druggists made the first marshmallow sweets from the root.

How to Make & Take It

Preparations: Tea · Gargle · Poultice

• Cold tea of the root: 1–2 teaspoons dried cut root to a cup of cold or lukewarm water. Let it stand four hours or overnight, then strain. For more, fill a jar a third full of root and top it up with water. Drink a cup up to three times a day.
• Why cold water: Cold water draws out the soothing mucilage. Simmering the root brings out its starch instead.
• Leaf tea: 2 teaspoons dried leaf to a cup of just-boiled water. Cover and steep 30 minutes.
• Make it fresh. It sours quickly. Make a day or two's worth and keep it cold.
• Gargle: Use the cold tea.
• Poultice: Mix the powdered root with enough warm water to make a paste and lay it on.
• Not a tincture herb. Water is what draws its goodness out.

Cautions

• Marshmallow is a very safe herb, and a food as well.
• Take it an hour or two apart from medicines, since its coating may slow their absorption.
• It is cooling and moistening, so it may not suit someone who already runs cold and damp.
• Safety in pregnancy and nursing has not been established, though herbalists count it among the gentlest herbs. Talk with a knowledgeable herbalist or care provider first.
• A serious burn, or blood in the urine, fever or pain in the back, needs medical attention.

Know the Plant

Marshmallow is a perennial, three to four feet tall, soft and velvety all over with a gray down. The leaves are roundish and heart-shaped, and the pale flowers open in late summer. The root is thick, long and tapering, white and stringy inside, and slippery when chewed.

It grows in salt marshes, damp meadows and along tidal rivers. It is native to Europe and parts of Asia and grows to some extent in the United States. Its cousins the common mallows are soothing in the same way.

A Little History

Althaea comes from the Greek altho, to cure. Dioscorides praised it, and Pliny wrote that "Whosoever shall take a spoonful of the Mallows shall that day be free from all diseases that may come to him." French druggists beat the root with sugar into pâte de guimauve, the first marshmallow, though the candy of that name no longer has any of the plant in it. The "mallows" that the hungry cut up in Job 30:4 were most likely a salt-marsh shrub of the Holy Land, and not this plant.

Motherwort

Botanical Name: Leonurus cardiaca L.

Family: Lamiaceae (Mint family)

Other Names: Lion's Tail · Common Motherwort

Parts Used: Leaves and flowering tops

Quick Look

Motherwort is a tall, prickly-flowered, very bitter member of the mint family, and its two names tell its two uses: cardiaca for the heart, and Motherwort for women. It calms a heart that races or pounds from nerves, quiets anxiety and irritability, and eases and regulates the monthly cycle. Reach for it when worry settles in the chest, and for the tense, overworked mother of any age.

Actions, Energetics & Taste

How It's Been Used

The anxious heart. Its best-known use. It is taken for a rapid, fluttering or pounding heartbeat that comes with anxiety, nervousness or a woman's hormonal changes. The old physicians called it a simple heart tonic, and herbalists often pair it with Hawthorn.

Nerves. Used for nervous tension, irritability, restlessness and broken sleep. It is a comfort to overworked mothers who could use some mothering themselves.

Monthly cycle. Taken to bring on a period that is late or scanty, above all when a chill or emotional strain has held it back, and to ease cramps. A hot Motherwort fomentation was laid over the lower belly for painful periods.

After childbirth. The old American physicians prized it for the mother after delivery, to keep the normal flow that follows a birth from stopping short. They found it better than any other remedy for that purpose.

Change of life. Herbalists use it for the sleeplessness, anxiety and pounding heart of menopause.

Overactive thyroid. Motherwort, Lemon Balm and Bugleweed together are an old formula for the racing heart of an overactive thyroid.

Blood pressure. Taken daily where tension drives the blood pressure up.

Digestion. As a bitter it wakes up a sluggish digestion and relaxes bowels bound up by tension.

How to Make & Take It

Preparations: Tincture · Tea · Electuary · Fomentation

• Tincture: 1:5 in 25% alcohol, ½ to 1 teaspoon, three times a day. It is best made from the fresh flowering herb. Because the herb is so bitter, most herbalists take it this way, and it is the better form for the heart.
• Tea: 1 teaspoon dried herb to a cup of boiling water. Cover and steep 10–15 minutes. Drink a cup up to three times a day. It is very bitter; mint or honey helps.
• Motherwort honey: Grind 1 cup of dried Motherwort to a powder. Stir it into ⅔ cup of honey and let it stand two days. Take a teaspoon as needed.
• Fomentation: Wring out a cloth in a strong, hot tea and lay it over the lower belly, as warm as is comfortable.

Cautions

• Avoid it in pregnancy, because it stimulates the womb and was used to bring on menstrual flow.
• Safety while nursing has not been established. Talk with a knowledgeable herbalist or care provider first.
• Many herbalists do not use it where periods are very heavy.
• Herbalists advise care alongside heart medicines.
• A racing or irregular heartbeat that is new, or that comes with chest pain, faintness or shortness of breath, needs medical attention.
• Do not give honey, or the Motherwort honey, to babies under one year.

Know the Plant

Motherwort is a perennial of the mint family, two to five feet tall, with stiff, square stems. The leaves stand in pairs, and the lower ones are deeply cut into pointed lobes like the fingers of a hand. Small pink to pale purple flowers ring the stem in tight whorls where the leaves join it, each set in a spiny cup that pricks the fingers. It has none of the sweet scent of the mints, only a pungent smell and a very bitter taste.

It is native to Europe and Asia. It was brought to America long ago and is now common across the country, usually near houses and along fences.

A Little History

Leonurus is Greek for "lion's tail," from a fancied likeness in the plant, and cardiaca means "of the heart." In 1598 John Gerard reported that many commended it for the heart. Nicholas Culpeper wrote in 1652 that "There is no better herb to take melancholy vapours from the heart, to strengthen it, and make a merry, cheerful, blithe soul than this herb." In America, William Cook (1869) classed it as a nervine tonic of the first rank for nervousness and a pounding heart.

Mullein

Botanical Name: Verbascum thapsus L.

Family: Scrophulariaceae (Figwort family)

Other Names: Great Mullein · Common Mullein · Aaron's Rod · Jacob's Staff · Candlewick Plant · Blanket Herb · Velvet Dock

Parts Used: Leaves, flowers and root, each for its own purpose

Quick Look

Mullein is the tall, flannel-leaved weed of roadsides and old fields, and three herbs in one. The leaf is the herbalist's first thought for a dry, hard, hacking cough. The oil of the flowers is the old remedy for earache. The root is used for a weak bladder and an aching back. It is one of the safest herbs there is.

Actions, Energetics & Taste

How It's Been Used

Coughs & lungs (leaf). Its great use. It is for dry, hoarse coughs that come chiefly at night, for bronchitis with a hard, sore cough, and for a throat and windpipe rubbed raw. It does not stop a cough; it moistens the airways and loosens what is stuck so that the cough can do its work. It was once grown on a large scale in Ireland as a remedy for consumption.

Earache (flower). A few warm drops of the flower oil in an aching ear is one of the best-known home remedies in herbalism. The old physicians also used it in some cases of deafness.

Swollen glands & sore throat (leaf). The leaf has a remarkable power to disperse swellings and gathered fluid. Hot leaves are laid on swollen glands, and the old physicians laid them as a poultice on the throat in tonsillitis and mumps.

Bladder (root). Herbalists use the root to tone a weak bladder that leaks with a cough or a sneeze, or at the change of life. The old physicians gave Mullein for bed-wetting and painful urination.

Back & joints. Herbalists today use the root for back pain and trouble in the spine, and lay the leaf as a poultice on aching joints.

Bowels & piles. The tea, often made with milk, is an old remedy for diarrhea and dysentery. A leaf fomentation or the flower oil is put on inflamed piles.

Asthma. The dried leaves were smoked in a pipe to ease asthma and an irritated windpipe.

Skin. The flower oil was rubbed on frostbite and bruises, and the leaves poulticed on wounds and sores.

How to Make & Take It

Preparations: Tea · Decoction · Tincture · Oil Infusion · Poultice · Fomentation

• Leaf tea: 1–2 teaspoons dried leaf to a cup of boiling water. Cover and steep 10–15 minutes. Strain it through a coffee filter or a fine cloth to catch the tiny hairs. Drink 1 to 2 cups, three times a day.
• In milk: Boil 1 ounce of dried leaves in a pint of milk for ten minutes. Strain well and drink it warm, three times a day, for a cough or loose bowels.
• Leaf tincture: 1:5 in 25–50% alcohol, 1 teaspoon, three times a day.
• Flower oil: Fill a jar a third full of dried flowers and cover them with olive oil. Keep it in a warm place for two to three weeks, then strain it until clear. For an earache, warm the bottle in the hand and put 2 or 3 drops in the ear. Some add a clove of garlic to the oil.
• Root decoction: Simmer ½ ounce of dried root in a pint of water for 15–20 minutes. Drink it through the day.
• Poultice or fomentation: Soften fresh leaves in a hot, strong Mullein tea and lay them on swollen glands, a sore chest or an aching joint.

Cautions

• Mullein is among the safest herbs, with no known toxicity.
• The fine hairs on the leaf can scratch the throat, so strain the tea well. They irritate some people's skin too.
• Herbalists do not put oil in an ear that is draining or whose eardrum may be broken. Severe ear pain, or ear pain with fever, needs medical attention.
• The seeds are not used.
• Mullein takes up what is in the soil, so gather it from clean ground, away from roadsides.
• Safety in pregnancy and nursing has not been established, though no problem is known. Talk with a knowledgeable herbalist or care provider first.
• A cough that lasts for weeks, or comes with blood or trouble breathing, needs medical attention.

Know the Plant

Mullein is a biennial. The first year it makes a flat rosette of large, gray-green leaves, six to fifteen inches long, as thick and soft as flannel. The second year it sends up a single stout stalk, four or five feet tall or more, with leaves running down the stem and a dense spike of yellow, five-petaled flowers that open a few at a time from June to August. One plant can ripen more than a hundred thousand seeds.

It is native to Europe and Asia and now grows wild all over North America, in clearings, pastures and along roadsides. Other Mulleins are used the same way. The first-year rosette is sometimes mistaken for Foxglove, which is poisonous. Mullein's leaf is densely woolly on both sides.

A Little History

The name is thought to come from the Latin mollis, soft. The plant gave light as well as medicine: its down was used for lamp wicks before cotton came in, which is why it is called Candlewick Plant, and the old herbalist John Parkinson wrote that in earlier times the stalks were dipped in suet and burned. Maud Grieve recorded the country cure of Mullein leaves boiled in milk for a cough. In America, King's American Dispensatory (1898) prized it to quiet an irritated chest and cough. Among herbalists today, Jim McDonald says plainly that "mullein will get you coughing stuff up and out," and he credits the root with helping his own injured back.