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MILKWEED JUICE FOR WARTS, COLUMBINE FOR HEAD LICE
When I was a boy, I had warts on my left hand. Someone told me I could get rid of my warts by applying the juice from common milkweed. I tried it and it worked. It's one of those wonders of nature that, sadly, has largely passed from the common-sense knowledge we pass along from one generation to the next.
Today, it seems, most of us are more likely to race to Target the minute our nose runs or our stomach bubbles. Healing ourselves with plants growing just beyond our doorstep is becoming a lost art, driven from our culture in part by high-tech medicine and the media-driven marketing muscle of the pharmaceutical industry.
Native Americans used plants to cure countless ailments, and their cures were retained when the oldest generation passed on. Presumably, a wise tribal elder passed along his healing secrets to other tribal leaders before he pass along himself.
How many of us know how to heal ourselves using extracts or poultices from plants growing in abundance behind our lot, in the road ditch or down by the creek?
I picked up a book last week titled "Medicinal Plants," and was amazed to discover how many everyday ailments are treatable using common plants from our gardens or a few steps beyond.
Sure enough, the book suggests that milk from common milkweed does, indeed, cure warts.
I've written in this column before that the juice from plantain lily is an antidote for poison ivy. I am living proof that it works. Turns out that many plants can be used to reduce the irritation of poison ivy, including Canada thistle, yellow jeweled touch-me-not, yellow giant hyssop, wild lettuce, soapwort, horse nettle, white oak, white willow and Virginia Creeper.
The book lists many other fascinating treatments. Seeds from columbine can be rubbed into hair to control head lice. Chippewa Indians used root bark tea from Serviceberry (with other herbs) as a tonic for excessive menstrual bleeding. Along that line, 65 different plants are listed as remedies for "female" ailments!
Perhaps the most amazing plant, from a healing standpoint, is Echinacea - you may know it as coneflower. Plains Indians are said to have used Echinacea for more medicinal purposes than any other plant group.
The root (chewed, or in tea) was used for snake and spider bites, cancers, toothaches, burns, hard-to-heal sores and wounds, flu and colds.
Science has confirmed many of the traditional uses of Echinacea, plus cortisone-like activity and insecticidal, bactericidal and immunostimulant activities.
In Germany, more than 200 pharmaceutical preparations are made from Echinacea plants, including extracts, salves and tinctures. The plant is used for wounds, herpes sores, canker sores, throat infections, and as a preventative for influenza and colds. It is also a folk remedy for brown recluse spider bites.
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How dry was it this year? Incredibly dry, according to the log I keep on my garage wall. Here are my monthly rainfall totals for this growing season, compared with 1995:
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1995
| 1996 |
| May |
1.4 in. |
1.25 in. |
| June |
4.5 |
2.6 |
| July |
4.0 |
0.45 |
| August |
7.0 |
3.1 |
| TOTAL |
16.9 |
7.4 |
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PUTTING DOWN ROOTS:
A Delightful Blend of
Gardening Wisdom, Wit
and Whimsy
$10 + $2 for shipping
by Cliff Johnson |
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