Red Clover

Botanical Name: Trifolium pratense L.

Family: Fabaceae (Pea family)

Other Names: Purple Clover · Trefoil

Parts Used: The flowering heads, with the small leaves just under them

Quick Look

Red Clover is the sweet pink clover of hayfields and roadsides, and one of the gentlest cleansing herbs. It is a slow, steady helper for the skin and the lymph, and a nourishing tea rich in minerals. Reach for it for eczema, acne and other stubborn skin trouble, for swollen glands, for a dry, spasmodic cough, and at the change of life.

Actions, Energetics & Taste

How It's Been Used

Skin. Its chief use. Herbalists give the tea for weeks or months for eczema, psoriasis, acne and recurring boils, often with Dandelion, Burdock or Nettle. A wash, poultice or salve of the blossoms is used on the skin as well.

Lymph & cleansing. A classic old blood purifier. It is used to move sluggish lymph and for swollen glands, and as a gentle spring cleanser.

Coughs. The old American physicians gave it for dry, spasmodic coughs: whooping cough, the cough of measles, bronchitis and an irritated windpipe. For a dry cough herbalists pair it with a moistening herb such as Marshmallow, Plantain or Licorice Root.

The change of life. Herbalists use it for hot flashes, night sweats and dryness, and to help keep the bones strong.

Women's cycles. Folk herbalists use it for tender breasts before a period and other signs of hormones out of balance.

Nourishment. The blossoms are rich in calcium, magnesium, potassium and iron, and a strong infusion is taken as a nourishing daily tea.

Joints. Used for the aches of arthritis and gout.

Old sores & burns. The old physicians made an ointment of it for slow-healing sores and badly healing burns, and a tea of the fresh flowers was an old remedy for bleeding piles.

Bites & stings. Fresh blossoms, crushed, are laid on a bite or sting.

Food. The sweet blossoms go into salads, tea blends and lemonade.

How to Make & Take It

Preparations: Tea · Tincture · Poultice · Salve

• Tea: 1–3 teaspoons dried blossoms to a cup of boiling water. Cover and steep 15 minutes. Drink up to three cups a day.
• Nourishing infusion: Put 1 ounce of dried blossoms in a quart jar and fill it with just-boiled water. Cover and let it stand several hours or overnight. Strain, and drink it through the day.
• Tincture: 1:5 in 30–40% alcohol, ½ to 1 teaspoon, three times a day.
• Poultice: Chop fresh blossoms with a little water and lay them on irritated skin.
• Salve: Infuse dried blossoms in oil, often with Calendula, and thicken with beeswax for eczema and itchy skin.
• Give it time. Like other cleansing herbs, it works slowly. Herbalists take it for weeks or months.
• Gather it at full bloom, away from roads and sprays, and dry it quickly in a single layer. Use only bright pink blossoms. Throw out any that turn brown or moldy.

Cautions

• Red Clover is gentle and safe for most people, and the blossoms are a food.
• Do not take it with blood thinners or with a bleeding disorder. Its natural compounds may slow clotting. Stop it two weeks before surgery.
• Use only well-dried, bright blossoms. Clover that has spoiled or fermented is the kind most likely to thin the blood.
• With a hormone-sensitive condition, such as an estrogen-sensitive breast cancer, or if you take hormone therapy, talk with your doctor first.
• Herbalists differ on its use in pregnancy and nursing, and its safety then has not been established. Talk with a knowledgeable herbalist or care provider first.
• If you take prescription medicine, check with a pharmacist.
• A lump or swollen gland that does not go down needs medical attention.

Know the Plant

Red Clover is a short-lived perennial of the pea family, six inches to two feet tall, with several softly hairy stems from one root. Each leaf has three oval leaflets, often marked with a pale crescent. From May into September it bears round heads about an inch across, made of many tiny tube-shaped flowers, pink to deep magenta and sweet with nectar.

It is native to Europe and Asia. Settlers brought it to North America as a hay and pasture crop, and it now grows wild in fields, meadows, roadsides and yards. Like other members of the pea family it enriches the soil with nitrogen. White Clover and the other clovers are different plants and are not used in its place.

A Little History

Red Clover came to America with European farmers as feed for cattle and was soon growing wild along every road. In 1812 John Hill recommended a tea of the fresh flowers for bleeding piles. American families made the strong tea a home remedy for whooping cough, and by the late 1800s the Eclectic physicians gave the blossoms for dry, spasmodic coughs and counted them among their chief blood purifiers, alone and in the well-known Compound Extract of Trifolium. Finley Ellingwood noted that it had to be kept up for months to show its effect. Herbalists today still count it among the gentlest and most nourishing of the cleansing herbs.

Red Raspberry

Botanical Name: Rubus idaeus L.

Family: Rosaceae (Rose family)

Other Names: Raspberry Leaf · Raspis · Hindberry · Bramble of Mount Ida

Parts Used: Chiefly the leaves. The berries are a food.

Quick Look

Red Raspberry is the garden bramble, and its leaf is the classic women's herb. Midwives and herbalists have long given the tea to tone and strengthen the womb, in the later months of pregnancy, after the birth, and for heavy or crampy periods. It is a mild, nourishing tea that tastes much like black tea, and its tightening action also makes it a good gargle for a sore mouth and a help for loose bowels.

Actions, Energetics & Taste

How It's Been Used

Pregnancy & birth. Its best-known use. Many midwives and herbalists recommend the tea in the later months of pregnancy to prepare the womb for birth, and women who drink it regularly are said to have easier labors. It was also taken warm and freely during labor itself, and some use it for the nausea of pregnancy.

After the birth. It helps the womb return to its size and tone, eases afterpains, and checks heavy bleeding. It is also said to enrich the milk, though too much may lessen it.

Women's cycles. Taken regularly for heavy periods and menstrual cramps, often with Nettle. Herbalists pair it with Red Clover when a woman hopes to conceive.

Nourishment. The leaf is rich in calcium, magnesium, potassium, iron and manganese, and a long-steeped infusion is a nourishing daily tea. With Nettle it is used for women low in iron.

Loose bowels. A cold infusion is an old and reliable remedy for diarrhea, used by many Native peoples.

Mouth & throat. A gargle or rinse for a sore throat, mouth sores and soft, spongy gums.

Wounds. The tea is used to wash wounds and sores, and the leaves, mixed with Slippery Elm, were made into a poultice for burns and scalds.

The fruit. The ripe berries are cooling and quench thirst. Raspberry vinegar, stirred into water, made a cooling drink in fevers and a gargle for a sore throat.

How to Make & Take It

Preparations: Tea · Tincture · Gargle · Wash

• Tea: 2 teaspoons to 2 tablespoons of dried leaf to a cup of boiling water. Cover and steep at least 10 minutes. Drink 1 to 3 cups a day.
• Nourishing infusion: Put 1 ounce of dried leaf in a quart jar and fill it with just-boiled water. Cover and let it stand four to eight hours. Strain, and drink it through the day.
• A pregnancy tea blend (for the second and third trimesters): Mix 2 cups Red Raspberry leaf, 2 cups Nettle leaf, 1 cup Oatstraw and ¼ cup Spearmint, and store it in a jar. Steep ¼ cup of the blend in a quart of boiling water for at least 30 minutes, and strain. Drink it hot or cold, up to 4 cups of the blend a day.
• Tincture: 1:5 in 30% alcohol, ¾ to 1 teaspoon, three times a day.
• Gargle or wash: Use the cooled tea.
• Give it time. Its benefits come from steady use over many weeks.
• Gather the leaves before the plant flowers, and dry them thoroughly before use.

Cautions

• Raspberry leaf is gentle and generally safe, and the berries are a food.
• In pregnancy, herbalists differ on when to begin. Many advise waiting until the second trimester or the last months, because it acts on the womb, and some use it throughout. Talk with your midwife, doctor or a knowledgeable herbalist first, and keep to about 2 cups of plain raspberry leaf tea a day.
• While nursing, very large amounts may lessen the milk supply.
• It may lower blood sugar. With gestational diabetes or other diabetes, let your care provider know, since medicine may need adjusting.
• Because it is astringent, large amounts can upset the stomach or bind the bowels. Avoid it with constipation.
• Herbalists advise care alongside blood thinners.
• Bleeding during pregnancy, or heavy bleeding at any time, needs medical attention.

Know the Plant

Red Raspberry is a bramble with a long-lived, creeping root that sends up woody canes, prickly or bristly, up to about six feet tall. Each cane lives two years and fruits in its second. The leaves are divided into three to seven toothed leaflets, green above and whitish and hairy beneath. Small white five-petaled flowers open in late spring, followed in summer by soft red berries made of many tiny beads.

It is native to Europe and Asia, and the wild red raspberry of Canada and the northern United States is used in the same way. Black raspberry leaves are used alike. The leaves are best gathered in early summer.

A Little History

The raspberry was known to the ancient Greeks, and its name, Rubus idaeus, means the bramble of Mount Ida. The English herbalist John Gerard called it Raspis or Hindberry. Many Native peoples of North America, among them the Cherokee, Cree, Iroquois and Algonquin, drank the leaf tea for diarrhea. In 1931 Maud Grieve recorded Raspberry Leaf Tea as valuable during childbirth, to be taken freely and warm. Its wide use as a tea through the later months of pregnancy came later, through midwives and herbalists, and it is now one of the best-known herbs for women.

Rose

Botanical Name: Rosa species, chiefly Rosa gallica L. (Apothecary's Rose), Rosa damascena Mill. and Rosa centifolia L. for the petals, and Rosa canina L. (Dog Rose) and wild native roses for the hips

Family: Rosaceae (Rose family)

Other Names: Apothecary's Rose · Dog Rose · Wild Rose · Briar Rose · Rose Hips

Parts Used: The petals and buds, and the ripe fruit, called hips. The leaves are used as well.

Quick Look

The Rose is the best-loved flower in the garden and a gentle medicine in two parts. The petals are cooling, calming and tightening: reach for them for grief and a heavy heart, for a sore throat or mouth, for loose bowels, heavy periods, and hot, irritated skin. The hips are a tart, nourishing fruit full of vitamin C, made into tea and syrup for the cold season and for aching joints. Both are foods, safe in generous amounts.

Actions, Energetics & Taste

How It's Been Used

Grief & the heart. The petals are a gentle comfort for heartache, grief, anxiety, irritability and low spirits. Herbalists often pair them with Hawthorn for grief. The scent alone is used to lift the mood.

Colds & the cold season (hips). Fresh hips hold more vitamin C, weight for weight, than oranges. The tea and syrup are taken through the winter, for colds, and while getting well.

Sore throat, mouth & eyes. A tea or honey of the petals is gargled for a sore throat, mouth ulcers and loose, tender gums. A cooled infusion was used to bathe sore, inflamed eyes.

Stomach & bowels. The petals and hips tighten and calm the bowels in diarrhea, and the petals soothe an upset stomach brought on by stress.

Women's cycles. Used for heavy periods and cramps, and for the irritability and sadness that can come before a period.

Heat & fever. Cooling for fevers, inflammation and a hot headache.

Skin. The petals and rose water tone and soothe dry, irritated or inflamed skin, rashes and burns. A strong petal tea washes cuts and scrapes and helps stop small bleeding, and rose vinegar, diluted, cools a sunburn.

Aching joints (hips). Herbalists use the hips for the aches of arthritis.

Food. The petals go into salads, jams, honey and baking. The hips make jam, jelly and syrup.

How to Make & Take It

Preparations: Tea · Syrup · Honey · Tincture · Wash

• Petal tea: Put 2 heaping tablespoons of dried petals in a quart jar and fill it with hot water. Cover and steep 20 minutes to an hour. Drink it warm through the day, or add it to a warm bath.
• Cooling rose tea: 6–8 teaspoons each of rose petals and Lemon Balm, with a pinch of lavender, in a quart of just-boiled water. Cover, steep at least 10 minutes, and serve hot or iced, with honey and lemon.
• Hip tea: Simmer about 2½ teaspoons of cut, seeded hips in a cup of water for 10 minutes. Strain through a fine cloth. Up to three cups a day.
• Double rose syrup: Simmer ¼ cup dried hips (or ½ cup fresh) and the peel of a lemon in 3½ cups of water for about 30 minutes, until reduced by half. Take it off the heat, stir in ¼ cup dried petals (or ½ cup fresh), cover, and steep 30 minutes to 4 hours. Strain, squeezing well. Warm the liquid gently with ¾ cup honey until it dissolves. Keep it in the refrigerator up to 3 months. Take 1 to 2 tablespoons, two or three times a day.
• Rose honey: Fill a pint jar with fresh petals, cover them completely with raw honey, and let it stand six weeks.
• Tincture: Petals, 1:5 in 30–40% alcohol, ¾ to 1 teaspoon, three times a day.
• Wash: A strong, cooled petal tea for cuts, scrapes and irritated skin.
• Choosing roses: Use fragrant old-fashioned or wild roses. Scentless hybrids are weak medicine.

Cautions

• Rose petals and hips are foods, safe in generous amounts. Herbalists count them safe in pregnancy and nursing.
• Use only roses that have never been sprayed. Florist roses are heavily treated and are not for eating.
• The seeds inside the hips are covered in fine hairs that irritate the throat and stomach. Remove the seeds, or strain hip tea and syrup through a fine cloth.
• Do not give honey to babies under one year old.
• Strong petal tea, like other astringents, may hinder the uptake of iron.
• Grief or low spirits that do not lift need the help of a trusted friend, pastor or doctor.

Know the Plant

Roses are shrubs and climbers with prickly stems and leaves made of five to nine toothed leaflets. The prickles are only on the surface and peel off with the bark. Wild roses have five petals, pink or white, and bloom once in early summer. Their hips ripen red or orange in late summer and autumn and grow sweeter after a frost. The hip is not a true fruit: it is a fleshy cup holding the small, hairy seeds.

The Dog Rose is a hedgerow rose of Europe, six to ten feet tall. Many wild roses are native across North America, and their hips are used the same way. The Apothecary's Rose, Rosa gallica, is the old deep-red rose of medicine; its petals are gathered just before the flowers open and dried quickly.

A Little History

The name comes through the Greek rhodon, red. The red Apothecary's Rose, the Rose of Provins, was the medicine rose of the old herbals; its petals were made into rose water, conserves and honey of roses, a gargle for sore mouths and throats. Nicholas Culpeper wrote that red roses strengthen the heart and the stomach, and the conserve of hips was kept in the British Pharmacopoeia. The Bible's rose, in "I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys" (Song of Solomon 2:1) and in the promise that "the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose" (Isaiah 35:1), was probably another flower, perhaps a narcissus, though no one can say for certain.

Rosemary

Botanical Name: Salvia rosmarinus Spenn. (long known as Rosmarinus officinalis L.)

Family: Lamiaceae (Mint family)

Other Names: Herb of Remembrance · Pilgrim's Flower · Compass Plant · Dew of the Sea

Parts Used: Leaves and flowering tops

Quick Look

Rosemary is the fragrant, needle-leaved shrub of the kitchen garden and the old herb of remembrance. It is warming and stimulating: it wakes up the mind, the circulation and a slow digestion. Reach for it when the head is foggy and the memory slipping, when someone is tired and low, when hands and feet are cold, when a meal sits heavy, and as a rub for sore muscles and a rinse for the scalp.

Actions, Energetics & Taste

How It's Been Used

Memory & a clear head. Its oldest fame. Rosemary has long been given to sharpen memory and concentration and to clear a foggy, tired mind, and herbalists have students smell it while they study. It suits older folks whose thinking, appetite and circulation have all slowed.

Low spirits & weariness. A warming tonic for low mood with tiredness, and for getting back on one's feet after illness. With Hawthorn it is given for a weak heart that comes with low spirits.

Circulation. It warms cold hands and feet, sends blood to the head, and is used for low blood pressure and sluggishness.

Headache. Used for headaches that come from poor circulation to the head, often with Sage.

Digestion. For slow, cold digestion with gas, bloating, cramping or nausea. It has long been cooked with fatty meats like lamb to help them digest, and it is said to help the liver with fats.

Colds & chest. The hot tea brings on a sweat in the chilled early stage of a fever. Rosemary honey soothes a sore throat, a steam opens a stuffy head, and it has been used to ease asthma.

Aches & pains. The infused oil, or the essential oil well diluted, is rubbed into sore muscles, stiff joints, sprains and the aches of arthritis.

Hair & scalp. A rinse or scalp oil stirs circulation to the scalp, and it is used for dandruff, an oily scalp and thinning hair.

Kitchen. A seasoning for roasts, stews, breads and vinegars. Before refrigerators it was rubbed into meat to help keep it.

How to Make & Take It

Preparations: Tea · Tincture · Oil Infusion · Honey · Steam · Wash

• Tea: 1–2 teaspoons dried leaf, or 2–4 teaspoons fresh, to a cup of hot water. Cover it, to keep in the oils, and steep 10 minutes. Up to three cups a day.
• Tincture: 1:5 in 40% alcohol, ¼ to ½ teaspoon, three times a day.
• Infused oil for the scalp and sore muscles: Put 1 cup of dried Rosemary in a jar and cover it with about 1¼ cups of sweet almond or olive oil. Set the jar in a pot of warm water on the lowest heat for 4–6 hours, stirring now and then and never letting it bubble. Cool, strain and bottle. For the scalp, massage some in, leave it 30 minutes or overnight, and wash it out.
• Hair rinse: Pour a strong, cooled tea over the hair after washing.
• Rosemary honey: Infuse fresh sprigs in honey and take it by the spoonful for a sore throat.
• Steam: Put 1–3 tablespoons of herb in a bowl with 4–6 cups of boiling water, tent a towel over the head, and breathe.

Cautions

• In the amounts used in cooking, Rosemary is safe for everyone.
• Avoid medicinal amounts in pregnancy, because large doses can stimulate the womb. Cooking amounts are fine.
• While nursing, keep to cooking amounts and avoid the essential oil.
• Avoid large doses with epilepsy or a tendency to seizures.
• It may hinder the uptake of iron. Take it apart from meals and iron supplements if you are low in iron.
• It may lower blood sugar. If you take insulin or other diabetes medicine, watch your levels.
• The essential oil is very strong. Never put it on the skin undiluted, and do not take it by mouth.
• A few people get a rash from handling it.
• Memory loss or confusion that is new or worsening needs medical attention.

Know the Plant

Rosemary is an evergreen shrub, two to four feet tall in most gardens and taller in warm country, with woody, grayish stems. Its narrow, leathery leaves are about an inch long, dark green above and whitish beneath, and smell strongly of pine and camphor. In spring, and often again later, it bears small two-lipped flowers, usually pale blue, sometimes white or pink.

It is native to the dry, rocky hills of the Mediterranean near the sea, which is how it got its name, from the Latin for dew of the sea. It wants sun and light, dry soil, and it grows best from cuttings. Botanists now place it with the sages, as Salvia rosmarinus.

A Little History

The Greek physician Dioscorides praised Rosemary for the brain, the heart and the stomach. In England it became the herb of remembrance and so of friendship, as Sir Thomas More wrote. Sprigs were woven into bridal wreaths and given to wedding guests, laid on the coffin at funerals, and hung at Christmas. In Ophelia's words in Hamlet, "There's rosemary, that's for remembrance." It was burned in sickrooms, and French hospitals burned it with Juniper to freshen the air. An old Christian legend tells that a Rosemary bush sheltered the Virgin Mary on the flight into Egypt (Matthew 2:13–15), and that its white flowers turned blue from her cloak. That is why the Spanish call it Romero, the Pilgrim's Flower. Another legend says that after thirty-three years, the age of our Lord, it grows wider but never taller.