Category — Medicinal plants

In the Celtic tradition, St. Brigid’s day - the second of February - marks the beginning of spring.

My own climate must be similar, because this is the time of year when we start hearing the peeper frogs, and, despite the rain, see some of the signs of spring. Like this planting of violets and valerian, for instance.

Lightly mulched by the black oak leaves that are so common around here, they are beginning to show signs of life. I love how the valerian (Valeriana officinalis) takes on a bronze tinge with its early foliage.

Besides being among the first plants to show signs of life, valerian and violets have something else in common: they’re both medicinal.  Actually, a lot of ornamental plants started out as medicinal, a sort of hangover from the time when a garden was a pharmacy, larder, and household supply source.

It’s pretty obvious that valerian is medicinal; the “officinalis” in its Latin name means a plant that was sold in European apothecary shops, a plant that has medicinal value. Some of valerian’s medicinal qualities are pretty commonly known. Valerian root (that’s the medicinal part) is a muscle relaxant that can help reduce aches and pains and ease the way  to sleep. It can also  just calm you down when you’re too nervy.  Maybe that calming effect is also why valerian has been touted as an aphrodisiac. In some parts of England, these powers of valerian were recognized in another way: valerian was hung in the house to invite peace and harmony, and to prevent bickering between marriage partners. Valerian has also been used for palpitations of the heart and epilepsy.

Valerian root is indeed useful stuff, but just a caution to those who have not tried it: any preparations involving roots must be simmered, and simmering valerian smells a little bit like dirty socks or a very hairy dog coming in after rolling in something dead. Fortunately, it doesn’t taste the way it smells, but preparing it can stink up a house. A lot of people prefer capsules. If you buy valerian root this way, be sure you get a good brand; bad processing and storage mean very low quality, which means few effects for you.

Valerian’s also a great garden plant, especially for those of us who have a lot of shade. It grows well with foxglove, which shares its taste for shade, rich soil, and water. The pink-tinged flower heads smell like vanilla heaven, which endears it to me.

Violets (Viola odorata), while well-known as a garden plant, are not well-known as medicinal these days. Yet they have not lost the properties that made them valuable to Europeans in ancient times. I could write pages and pages on their magical and medicinal uses. (For those of you who think the two are at odds with each other, I’ll point out that magic and medicine come from the same root. I’ll further point out that people still put a lot of magical faith in the medicine of our times; our touching belief that doctors know everything, and our fascination with medical TV shows, are only two example of this.)

In ancient Greece, violets were used to embellish homes and temples, since they were believed to calm anger. This belief may be related to violet’s connection to the moon goddess. Perhaps it was that same connection that made the ancient Romans decorate their parties with violets to prevent drunkenness (maybe it was just quarrelsome drunkenness they were trying to alleviate?)

In more modern times, Euell Gibbons had violet leaves analyzed for their vitamin content. They are very high in vitamin C, and also in vitamin A (could repairing vitamin deficiency have something to do with their anger- and drunkenness-averting qualities?). Gibbons used to cook them up as spring greens; I tend to use them as a staple of what I call “garden tea”, tea made out of whatever plants are showing enough leaf for me to take some.

The leaves have also been used in ointments for swellings and inflammations, and the flowers used to be made into violet syrup, which was said to cure ague, epilepsy, pleurisy, quinsy, jaundice, consumption, insomnia, and inflammation of the eyes.

It might or might not do any of those things. But when I see the first violets bloom, it certainly does my eyes good.

Resources:

Donald Law, Concise Encyclopedia of Herbs, St. Martin, 1976

Richard Alan Miller, The Magical and Ritual Use of Perfumes, Destiny Books, 1990

Euell Gibbons, Stalking the Healthful Herbs, David McKay Co. Inc., 1966

It’s time to thin carrots, and reap the rewards by eating the tiny baby carrots whose lives are ending untimely. Carrots that can be steamed to perfection, eaten with fish, sausage, tofu, or any other food that makes a tender tasty treat.

In my climate, carrots are fall-planted, but even gardeners in harshly cold climates can have carrots through the winter. Ruth Stout, who gardened in Connecticut, kept her carrots under a thick layer of mulch. In winter, she’d go out, lift off the mulch, and pull out her carrots - and she got frost through mid-June.

I wish I could say that the carrots in these pictures are my own - but they are the generous contribution of my neighbor, who handed them to me through the fence as he was thinning. He even gave me a cooking tip along with them. “Snip up the bottom part of the stems and throw them in with what you’re cooking,” he suggested. “They taste great.”

The part he means is in the center of this picture: the light-green juicy part. They do taste good. You still have to cut off the tough shoulders of the carrot, but the stem bottoms are crisp and juicy, and add a nice flavor. Since the baby carrots are easy to steam whole, there’s not a lot of work involved in the whole procedure.

Some people use the leaves of carrots as a parsley substitute (carrots and parsley are in the same family), or throw them in the juicer or stock pot. The dark-green parts of the leaves are bitter from their high potassium content, so you may want to be cautious. The light-green bottom parts have a bit of pungency, but haven’t gotten to bitterness (at least in this young stage). These lighter greens probably share some of the protein, minerals, and vitamins (including vitamin K) of the darker upper leaves.

I love carrots fresh from the garden: one of my first garden experiences was on my grandparents’ farm. I can’t remember if it was my grandmother or my grandfather who amazed me by pulling a carrot straight out of the ground. I was four years old. Who knew carrots came out of the ground? But the flavor of it, washed off under the tap, the first crisp bite taken with in a minute of pulling it free, was something I never forgot.

The carrots my neighbor gave me are true baby carrots, unlike the kind you see in stores. Those bags of baby carrots? They’re just extruded big carrots, carved into baby shapes to fool us into thinking we’re getting something we’re not. (Don’t believe it? I wasn’t sure either, at first. Then I took a close look at them. Yep. Carved.)

Of course there is a difference between the immature thinned carrots my neighbor gave me, and the seeds that are bred to grow carrots which will never get bigger than my finger. Yet the tender, sweet-and-spicy fresh flavor of thinned carrots is its own delicacy.

Like many foods, carrots were originally grown for medicine. And modern science is finding that there may have been good reason for that. Carrots are food powerhouses; according to the Carrot Museum  one pound of carrots can give a normal person enough energy to lift 64 tons one foot into the air (although having the energy and having the strength are two different things. I’m not sure exactly how this energy level is calculated.).

Most people know about the carotene which converts to vitamin A in our bodies. (Both “daucus” and “carota” refer to the orange color that carotene gives to carrots.) It helps our night vision, and staves off macular degeneration. But one serving of carrots a day will also reduce chances of a heart attack by 60% (winter squash will do the same thing; it’s that beta-carotene again). And just two carrots a day can lower cholesterol by as much as 20%. Carrots can also help protect against cancer of the larynx, bladder, and cervix.

Some people claim to have cured cancers, diabetes, high blood pressure, arthritis, and cardiovascular diseases by eating diets high in carrots. The Hallelujah Diet  was devised by a pastor in upper New York state who healed his own cancer with it, then went on the lecture circuit.

Eating carrots might have some drawbacks: the Greeks who hid in the Trojan Horse were said to have eaten carrots to make their bowels inactive. I’d never thought about that important part of infiltration strategy before. Wonder what happened to the liquid wastes?

If that last fact disturbs you, you can move on to the more genteel Carrot Nutrition quiz. (I’ve given some hints in this post.) Or, if you prefer not to work so hard, the Carrot Museum has a list of Carrot Trivia you can use to amuse your friends (that’s where I got the tip about the Trojan Horse).

Sometimes, devotion to carrots can go over the edge. Jeff Chiplis’s page  has over 10,000 carrot-related items. If  you get bitten by the carrot beetle (there is such a thing), there’s a special resort for you: reserve a room at the Armistead Cottage in Rhode Island. Romana Zawarti has decorated the place with over 2,036 carrot-inspired items, and her husband Charles photographs them.

Carrots may seem like a pedestrian vegetable, but when we have them for dinner, we’re tapping deep into our roots. Eating a piece of ancient history.

There’s something about clary. A luminescence in the way the sun catches the flowers. An appeal to the deeply-vein-carved fuzzy leaves.  And it’s an obliging plant; it’ll put on a show under almost any circumstances.

If you grow clary sage in native clay dirt, it will hang in and produce tough little plants that need no extra watering to survive. But the richer the soil, the more the water, the bigger and lusher they get; I’ve seen them at least three times the size of more poorly-fed ones, and fairly pulsing with green and silver.

If you have a limited water supply, and can’t or don’t want to amend your soil, it’s good to know the plants that will survive under those conditions. Clary sage is one of them. It’ll even grow in semi-shade, though it much prefers sun. The only places it won’t do well are full shade and boggy undrained sites.

Part of what gives the flower that luminescence, I think, comes from the different colors and textures involved. This closeup shows bracts and bi-colored flower

and this really close shot shows how the pink-purple of the bracts contrasts with the violet-purple (and white) of the flowers in a way that somehow blends to a light-filled haze when you back off from the plant.

Clary sage’s name supposedly originates from “clear eye”, which comes from using the seeds to take irritating stuff out of the eyes. Like chia seeds, clary seeds are covered with a mucilaginous coating that puffs up into a gel when moistened; this probably allowed the offending item to attach itself and get removed. Or  maybe the mucilage is soothing in itself, I don’t know. Culpepper (a 17th century English herbalist who made it his mission to get herbal knowledge out of the hands of the leeches and into the heads of the common folk) claims that making the mucilage into a kind of compress relieved swellings and tumors, and drew out splinters and thorns.  The leaves also have anti-inflammatory properties and, judging by the fact that he recommends them for “hot inflammations” (probably infections) they may be antiseptic as well.

I haven’t used clary for any of the purposes Culpepper recommends, but I’ve used clary medicinally in an informal way for years. One winter I had a bad case of flu. I wanted soup, but I didn’t want to go out and shop, so I had to figure out something with what I had. What I had was potatoes and clary sage plants, the only substantial green leaves still out there. I picked a couple, thinking that their hairiness wouldn’t make them much of a treat.

But I was wrong. The leaves cooked up tender and sweet, and flavored the potatoes beautifully; all I added was salt. And I swear I felt better after I ate that soup. I always eat it when I’m sick, and I always feel better after. Clary sage leaves are available all year round in my climate, although they taste better before the plant flowers.

Probably clary sage’s most famous medicinal use is in aromatherapy, where it’s recommended for creating relaxed euphoria. Many years ago I put that knowledge to good use; I was splitting up with a boyfriend I’d been living with, and as I made trips back and forth for my stuff, I sometimes had to work around the woman who was now living with him. I had planted clary sage in the garden, and it was in flower. I ran in to sniff some on one occasion, and, well, it worked. It was a friend to me in a time of sorrow, or at least severe humiliation.

Tastes differ, however, and so do senses of smell. While some people find clary sage’s scent resinous and musky, to others it smells like dirty socks and old sweat. These people are not likely to be soothed by the smell of clary sage. What’s your own response?

Here’s a story about a plant that’s conservative in the best sense of the word: it protected the life of a civilization, it grows in the desert, and it’s been able to hold on to its own life force for 2,000 years.

In the 1970s, archaeologists excavated Herod the Great’s palace on Masada, in Israel. One of the things they discovered was an ancient jar which proved to hold Judean date palm seeds, Phoenix dactylifera, still dry and well-preserved. When they were radiocarbon-tested, they were found to be about 2,000 years old. One theory is that they are the pits spit out by soldiers, caught in the compound during a Roman siege. Rather than surrender, they committed mass suicide. But they left their date pits behind.

Those soldiers are long gone, but the seeds are moving on to a new life. Thirty years after their discovery, on the Jewish new year of trees (Tu Bishvat), Dr. Elaine Solowey soaked three Judean date palm seeds in a solution of fertilizers and hormones. Then she planted  them at a desert kibbutz. Six weeks later, one had come up and started forming fronds; by June 2008, depending on whose report you read, it was four feet (1.4 meters) or five feet (1.5 meters) high, with nearly a dozen fronds.

“Methuselah” (the tree is named after the oldest person in the Bible) broke a previous record of old-seed-sprouting: a 1,300-year-old Chinese lotus seed. The Judean date palm may be younger than some ancient grain seeds that have been sprouted, though. Nobody knows yet whether Methuselah will bear fruit;  as with many ancient plants, date trees are dioecious, with male and female flowers on separate trees. You can see it pictured in its smaller stages here.

Judean date palms were an important part of ancient Judean culture – so important that they became a symbol of Judea itself. When the Romans invaded, they found forests of 80-foot date palms, part of a fruit-export business, and a source of shade and shelter as well as food for the residents.

Any sweet-fruit-bearing tree is important, not only for the candy rush but for the things you can make from fermenting and processing their sugars: vinegar (for disinfection and food preservation) and alcohol (no need to describe its uses, I think). The rest of the tree was used to make furniture, rope, fuel, and packing material.

Probably because of their generous gifts to the people who grew them, Judean date palms  are were a symbol of grace and elegance in ancient Jewish culture; the name “Tamar” is derived from the date palm’s ancient Hebrew name. Judean date palms were also used medicinally, for anything from a hot sex life to tumors, heart problems to constipation. But by about 70 CE, when the Romans invaded for the second time, the date palm was on the decline; the fruit-export business had stopped. By 500 CE, the Judean date palm had disappeared.

Until now. Genetic tests show that its DNA is most closely related to an old Egyptian variety, Hayany. It may contribute endurance and disease resistance if it’s crossbred with other dates. (It seems as if it would certainly contribute to longevity.) Modern Israeli date palms are a strain originally from Iraq, which arrived in Israel via California. As far as anyone knows, they don’t have the medicinal qualities of the ancient Judean date palm.

In ancient Egypt, date seeds were placed in pharoahs’ tombs, symbolizing immortal life. Whether this refers to date’s medicinal powers, or just the everyday miracle of a plant’s ability to renew its own life, that practice gives resonance to the Judean date palm’s botanical name, Phoenix dactylifera. The fabulous Phoenix was able to burn itself at the end of its life – and then fly up, resurrected.

 JUNE: A MONTH TO HONOR WATER

In a way, my whole blog is about low-water gardening; that’s the reason I got involved with tulips, and I already loved natives and Mediterranean herbs. During June, my posts will all be about conserving water in the garden. This gives me scope to cover everything from containers to cityscapes, soil to site to sprays, and of course portraits of more of those stellar plants that spread their glories with little or no watering. (Hint: the “Wild Plants” category will give you quite a few more; so will the “Bulbs” category.)

One of the reasons I coveted this plant was the memory of some friends here, years ago, who had a beautiful garden. Papaver orientale was one of their volunteer plants; it came up and gave a fine bright display every late spring without any care or watering whatever.

Since I’m easily infatuated by plants that give joy with little or no work from me, I took note. Papaver orientale was a plant to covet; reading catalogues, I found the lovely salmon-pink Victoria Louise, and knew she was it.

I’ve recently found that this casual use of oriental poppy wasn’t original with my friends. In 1874, The Journal of Horticulture, Cottage gardener, and Country Gentlemen said, ‘The double varieties of Papaver orientale, of which there are many colors, are very ornamental, and are useful for sowing in rough corners, where they often make a display without trouble.’

It’s interesting to know there were double versions of this poppy back then; I haven’t seen any modern ones.

But perhaps they are in the phenomenal list of Papaver orientale provided at Plantaholic. Until I read the Plantaholic site, I hadn’t realized there were quite so very many oriental poppy varieties; they have 150 types, and breeders are working all the time, making sturdier stems, longer flowering, and a list of other desirable traits.

To me, the most desirable traits of Papaver orientale are their toughness (a zone range from 3 to 9 helps testify to that), their beauty, and their willingness to bloom freely without extra water from me.  An extra bonus is some of their medicinal qualities; studies   show that Papaver orientale can act as a central nervous system depressant and stimulant; that it’s a sudorific (that means it makes you sweat) and good for heart tumors. (Just a reminder: Papaver orientale is not the poppy that opium comes from. That’s another species, Papaver somniferum.)

Papaver orientale is easy to grow with little or no water because it’s another Mediterranean plant; the Mediterranean has the same rainy winters and dry summers my area does. In its wild form, Papaver orientale is native to northwestern Iran, northeastern Turkey, and the Caucasus: Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia.

According to Digging Dog nursery, the variety ‘Victoria Louise’ goes back to 17th century Armenia. I wasn’t quite sure, though, if they were referring to this cultivar or Papaver orientale in general. It seems to me that there would be much earlier records on Papaver orientale than that, since the Emirates and the Ottoman Empire (which once encompassed all these countries) were plant-mad cultures. Our own garden records are often so eurocentric that they disregard the work of other cultures altogether, so it’s hard to know.

In any case, this western Asian plant has made itself so at home in North America that, in some places, it has naturalized. (I’ve never seen this, but it was on the government botany site, so it must be right, right? Has our government ever lied to us?)

If you get seeds, I would follow nature’s advice and plant them in fall. I was lucky enough to get my plant from a local grower (that means I’m more likely to get a plant that does well in my area); I have such a small garden, I often get only specimens of each plant. It seems silly to buy seeds if I want only one.

Papaver orientale is a tough plant; its zone range testifies to that: zones 3 to 9. It does need some winter chill to do well, so it might have a hard time in climates that get any warmer.

Each flower gave a little extra show; after the petals drop, the puffy almost-furry flower center looks like a flower in itself (a scabiosa on steroids, maybe).

One of the things that helps Papaver orientale be so water-thrifty is its fleshy taproot, which acts both as storage for moisture and a deep-level moisture extractor. I have been known to water poppies if we have a warm spring spell, just so they last longer, but it’s not necessary for plant survival.

The One Stop Poppy Shoppe (more on this below) says that Victoria Louise goes well with rose-red, violet-blue, and soft blue. I also found that it went very nicely in a container with silver-green wormwood (Artemesia absinthium), another plant that needs very little water to thrive (and can survive with none). Both plants also need good drainage, a very common requirement for plants who sail through dry summers without water.

Easy, flashily beautiful, and water-saving: Victoria Louise is a good candidate for a water-saving garden, in containers and out of them.

Poppy bonuses:

One Stop Poppy Shoppe  This link will get you to their multitudinous oriental poppy seed selection, but they have  many species and varieties. Fun to browse.

Sylvia’s black-and-white oriental poppy