Description: common plantain (P major) is characterised by its rat tail-like flower spikes and basal rosette of fleshy, rounded or ovate leaves. It grows to around 15 cm high and is commonly found in gardens and pavement cracks. Ribwort plantain (Planceolata) is taller, up to 75 cm, with more pointed, lance-shaped leaves with three to five prominent ribs. Its flowers are dark rust with clear white feathery stamens and appear from late spring to early autumn.

Part used: leaves

Actions: common plantain - anti-bacterial, antihistamine, anti-allergenic, astringent, blood tonic, demulcent, diuretic, expectorant, styptic; ribwort plantain - anti-catarrhal, antispasmodic, relaxing expectorant, tonifies mucous membranes

Herbal BeautyCommon plantain was known as “white man’s foot” in North America as the native tribes watched it spread with the settlers. The plant is a familiar garden weed, often found filling the cracks in crazy paving and dominating lawns. To the Anglo-Saxons it was “waybread” - one of the nine sacred herbs given to mankind by Woden and listed in the ninth-century poem the Lacnunga. The plant has long been regarded as an important healing herb - Pliny even suggests that if several pieces of flesh are put in a pot with plantain they will join back together again.

Externally the leaves are a good emergency treatment for irritant insect bites, while internally common plantain tea - made from the leaves - can be helpful for gastric irritations, irritable bowel, piles, cystitis or heavy periods. Plantain juice, mixed with honey, is a soothing remedy for cuts and minor wounds.

Common plantain’s close relative, ribwort, is more likely to be found in the wild. It is used for colds, hay fever and allergic rhinitis; but also contains minerals and trace elements - particularly zinc, potassium and silica- so can act as a tissue healer and immune stimulant.The presence of aucubin, an antibiotic chemical, helps to make it healing and supportive for the immune system.

Self-heal Prunella vulgaris

Description: an invasive, creeping perennial commonly found as a garden weed and one that readily invades lawns. It has oblong ovate leaves and deep-purple, lipped flowers produced in compact spikes which ripen to produce brown spiked seed pods in autumn. Parts used: whole plant collected during flowering, flower heads collected in midsummer

Actions: alterative, anti-bacterial, astringent, bitter, cooling, diuretic, hypotensive, tonifies liver and gall bladder, vulnerary

As its common name implies, self-heal is a well- established European wound herb, widely used to stop bleeding from “inward and outward wounds”. The flower spikes were considered to resemble the throat and under the Doctrine of Signatures theory, it was also used for inflammations of the mouth and throat. In fact the botanical name, Prunella - or so William Cole argued in 1657 - is derived from a German word die Breuen, meaning mouth.

Self-heal can be useful for all sorts of bleeding - including heavy periods where there is no known cause and blood in the urine from severe cystitis.

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Anti Allergenic, Astringent Herbs: Plantain Plantago spp.