Revising the basics : winter colds and coughs (and a touch of family)

I seem to have spent the majority of this holiday season listening to other people cough, sneeze and blow their nose. I suppose it’s only to be expected at this time of year after a mild autumn has suddenly turned into a very frosty winter and everyone has been rushing around like mad things trying to prepare for their own family or personal celebrations.

Of course we all hope our immune systems are healthy enough to ward off whatever germs are around but you can help yourself by leaving button mushrooms on your windowsill for three days to drastically increase their Vitamin D content before you eat them. Helpful herbs are echinacea, and astragalus. Echinacea can be taken as a tea, tincture or tablets. Reishi or Shitake mushrooms also have immune strengthening properties and both the mushrooms and astragalus root can be used in stews or soups. (Remove the sliced astragalus root before serving.)

Remember that grief and loss can severely deplete your immune system, so special consideration should be given to anyone who is suffering at this time. Immune strengthening herbs should not be taken if you have an auto-immune condition such as rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, fibromyalgia etc. as they might precipitate a flare-up in the condition.

Thankfully, my parents and their carers were all well when we visited on Christmas Eve and two of our children with their partners joined us at the farm for Christmas dinner. Only Stephen’s girlfriend, Sarah was suffering from the lingering effects of a dreadful cold and cough which struck her during their pantomime run during the third week of December. She had already been dosed with sage and thyme elixir and was given another bottle of cough syrup to try out when she left us last weekend.

Our poor daughter in law was the only person in her household to stay well over Christmas when her mother contracted tonsillitis, her father developed a serious chest infection and both her children and Richard went down with a dreadful cold. They were just getting better when they came to us for three days on December 27^th but the baby, Thomas was not well. Neither child ate as much as normal but Thomas still hovered up his carrots while James stuck with plain pasta shells and five clementines in one day!

Yesterday we travelled to Woking to visit all Chris’ family. His mother has developed pains in her back and is under the GP’s care. I didn’t dare offer her any pain salve to rub on but Chris’ father has felt the benefit of mullein root tincture for a back issue he developed several years ago. Every Christmas I make him some hawthorn cider vinegar to help with his heart issues. This year the colour was a beautiful stain glass red.

Perhaps now is a good time to revise the herbs which can help during these difficult times. At the first sign of a cold, I use dropperfuls of elderberry elixir (equal to 30 drops or ½tsp) every two hours or so for the first day then three times a day. For children I would substitute a dessert spoon of elderberry cordial.

Colds are the perfect proving ground for fire cider vinegar. I’ve got to the stage where I loathe the taste as a drink so take 2tsp in a shot glass diluted with water. Chris still prefers his with honey and boiling water in a mug. In between the medicinal mugs I’ve been offering an infusion of ginger, lemon juice and slices of orange. I can drink it straight but Chris has it mixed with honey or some spiced apple cordial which needs using up.

Today has also been stock making day from the remains of the turkey carcass. You can make stock from any bones. There is nothing more important than a nourishing broth for people with digestive difficulties or those recovering from viral infections.

Cover the bones in a large saucepan with water. Add 1-2 tablespoons of cider vinegar to help release the minerals from the bones. Add anti-viral herbs e.g. rosemary, thyme, sage, bay. (1 pinch of each herb plus 1 or 2 bay leaves) peppercorns for flavour, onions and leeks for pro-biotic stimulation of good gut bacteria, celery sticks (at least 3) for prevention of gout and help with arthritic or inflammatory conditions. DON'T ADD SALT.

Bring to the boil and simmer for at least one hour. If you are using large mutton or beef bones put aside 3-4 or more hours making sure the liquid level doesn't drop too much. If making stock in a cookpot/slow cooker, simmer all day on low.

Strain the stock and use to add a mixture of vegetables or vegetables and meat. If the bones have meat left on them, use it in the soup. Alternatively the stock can be frozen in small quantities and used as a nourishing drink or sauce base later.

If you are vegetarian or vegan, you can still make a nourishing stock by cooking vegetables, herbs, roots and mushrooms together for long periods.  Start by dicing at least half an onion per person and sweat in olive oil with at least two cloves of garlic. Add half a pint of water or vegetable broth per person together with a large handful of peeled and  chopped seasonal vegetables such as carrots, parsnips, sweet potatoes, cabbage, celery, corn, turnips, potatoes and fresh or tinned tomatoes. Add one small handful of seaweed per person to provide seasoning and to strengthen the immune system. Finally add one ounce fresh, or one-half ounce dried mushrooms per person (any kind) together with dried or fresh herbs (rosemary, thyme, oregano, basil, marjoram, and sage) and tonic roots (Siberian ginseng, astragalus, burdock, dandelion, chicory, yellow dock, American ginseng).  Bring to the boil and simmer for an hour. You may wish to remove the roots before serving.

Viral infections make everyone miserable. There are some simple actions which can be taken to make life less uncomfortable, but these must be carried out in conjunction with common sense and basic nursing care.

The secret of herbal help is to start taking it as soon as you suspect you are coming down with something. It doesn’t actually matter what form you take the herbs in, as long as you take them as soon as you can, ideally at half hourly intervals for the first 12 hours or so.

Cider vinegar: sage, fire cider, garlic, - dose is 2 tsp in water or as a drink with honey

Elixir: elderberry, sage/thyme, bergamot, – dose is 1/2tsp/1 dropperful/30 drops

Honey: elderberry, bergamot, thyme/garlic, sage – dose is 2 tsp, can be eaten, drunk or added to bread or other food.

Tea: elderberry, calendula, sage, thyme, Echinacea, bergamot – dose is 2tsp dried herb or 2 tblsp fresh herb steeped in just boiled water for 10 minutes with a lid. Add honey to taste.

Tincture: elderberry, Echinacea – dose is 1/2tsp/1 dropperful/30 drops

For colds

Classic Cold Tea

Use 1tsp each of dried peppermint, yarrow and elderflower (1tblsp if fresh)

Pour 1/2-1pt boiling water into a teapot of cafatiere and steep for ten minutes. Strain and drink every half hour. Sweeten to taste. If you don’t like the taste of peppermint you can use other herbs such as New England Aster, or bergamot. If you only have a herb in tincture form, add the tincture either 1 tsp or in drop dosage to the hot infusion.

Ginger and Lemon Tea

Grate or finely chop 1inch root ginger without peeling. Place in cafatiere or teapot and fill with just boiling water. Infuse for ten minutes. Squeeze the juice from half a lemon and place in a cup or mug. Pour the strained ginger tea over the lemon juice and add honey to taste. For an anti-viral chesty tea, add 1tsp dried thyme and 1tsp dried sage to the grated ginger root. Infuse together and pour over lemon juice and honey.

For Fevers

Make elderflower tea and serve hot. Elderflower is a diaphoretic which will make you sweat and kill the virus. This is especially useful for children. Boneset tea is also useful for bone-aching fevers. If you have a fever which won’t break, give vervain tincture – half a tsp or 30 drops.

For coughs

Before deciding what herb to use, you must be sure what kind of cough you are dealing with.

Dry, irritable coughs: cherry bark, ginger

Cold, hacking coughs: angelica, fennel

Wet, green, mucous laden coughs: elecampane root (especially good for children and people who suffer with asthma)

Deep seated infected chest infections: mullein

Ordinary coughs: sage & thyme, white horehound/hyssop/marshmallow leaf or root.

Cough Syrup

(recipe from Non Shaw and Christopher Hedley's Herbal Remedies)

1 l (2 pints) water

40 g (1 1/2 oz) dried herb or 100 g (4oz) fresh chopped herb

450 g (1 lb) sugar

Put herb in water, bring to a boil, let simmer 20-30 minutes, strain.

Clean out pan, pour liquid back into it, let sit on minimum heat until you only have 2 dl (7 fl.oz) left Add sugar, simmer until sugar has dissolved, pour into jars, label. (This takes time. 1 fluid ounce evaporates about every hour.)

A children’s cough syrup can be made from onions or elderberry and Echinacea in equal parts. For a “straightforward” cough syrup, use 2 parts peppermint, 1 part hyssop, 1/2 part thyme, 1/2 part horehound. For a cough syrup which can also be used as a drink, use hyssop, thyme, elecampane, white horehound, lemon balm and root ginger.

N.B. Do not use peppermint with children under 2 years. Honey can be used as a substitute for sugar, but do not use with children under 1 year.

Dose: 1 dessertspoon as and when or make a drink with 1 tblsp and sip.

If you have blocked sinuses, thyme can useful but horseradish is very effective as well. If you have continual sinus problems, read Jim Macdonald’s excellent paper.

I hope you escape the winter without succumbing to any nasty bugs but if you do, reach for your syrups, tinctures and elixirs, wrap up warm and get plenty of rest.

Foraging in the rain (or what's been happening for the past month!)

No matter how good a herbwife’s intentions, sometimes you have to do what you can with what is easily available with tools you have to hand. This was why I found myself, last Friday morning, trudging along sodden hedgerows in my mother’s wellingtons with cold November rain rattling down around me. The left boot leaked so my sock was becoming increasingly wet but I was determined not to be beaten until my basket was sufficiently full of rosehips and sloes to make my suffering father a new batch of syrup for his cold and cough.

My father will be eighty-six next month. He comes from small, Welsh, farming stock and was brought up in depression-ridden Black Country until his mother died from TB when he was ten and his father found a Warwickshire farmer to apprentice him to a different life. He’s always been strong with boundless energy. Someone, who could do anything he set his mind to but the last ten years of caring for my increasingly fragile mother have taken their toll. He needs lots of sleep and worries, so we visit every fortnight and I provide most of their food so he only has to cook occasionally.

Our last visit to their farm, a month ago, culminated in another bout of inflamed gallbladder pain for me. It resolved by the following morning, as it usually did and as my eldest son and his family were spending the weekend with us, I ignored it. It was the premiere of my daughter’s first play, performed by her new drama company and directed by my second son. It was a resounding success and Chris and I were so please her brother and sister in law could share in the excitement.

For me it was the beginning of the end. My gallbladder decided it would not be ignored any longer. After four days of continuous pain I gave in and asked Chris to call the GP, expecting him to prescribe pain killers and nothing else. It was somewhat shocking for him to take one look at me and arrange immediate admission to hospital.

It was an interesting eight days. The care was exemplary; the staff wonderful - skilled, caring and compassionate. I learned many things about myself and other people. The greatest torture was not having two professionals trying to find a vein in both my arms to take a cannula for one and a half hours when I spiked a fever; it was being forced to listen to adrenalin-ridden TV soaps by my neighbours every evening when all I wanted to do was sleep!

Luckily, the fever had abated by the time the Upper GI surgeon came to see me, so he decided against an emergency cholecystectomy. I quite like my gall bladder, even though it’s now full of stones so I was glad to keep it for a while longer. They pumped me full of so much saline, potassium and hardcore antibiotics, I was awash with fluids, hands swollen and deeply purple arms.

Everything resolved once I came home. I could walk, talk, sleep and turn over on both sides without discomfort. A low fat diet cooked from scratch from real ingredients is no hardship although I shall miss peanut butter, hummus and cream.

Did I take any herbs once I had access to my larder? Yes, but I kept it simple. Dandelion and burdock to help support the assault on my liver by all the complex pharmaceuticals, yarrow to deal with all the bruising and nettle seed with my morning porridge to combat all the stressful situations I’d been through. Lots of low-fat yoghurt with fresh fruit to help rebuild my gut bacteria.

For over a week I was forced to rest, doing nothing more strenuous than checking emails and watching whatever TV programmes I desired. It was bliss. I even managed to attend my niece’s wedding, touched by how pleased everyone was to see me.

The following week I prepared more food for the farm in between resting. We had no idea my father had succumbed to a virus brought in by one of my mother’s carers. He grew progressively worse over the Thursday and finished the bottle of rosehip syrup I’d brought him previously. I made it into a tasty drink by covering the base of a small cup with syrup, adding lemon juice and pouring over boiling water from the kettle on the hob.

Making a new batch of rosehip syrup seemed my best course of action since I could walk along the next door fields but there was no way I could visit my herb beds to gather sage and thyme. I might walk down there but could not have walked back.

The rosehips were large and plentiful. I found sloes for extra vitamin C in the rickyard and greater plantain rosettes were plentiful in the lawn to soothe any inflammation in his chest. Chickweed was growing in the greenhouse so was added to the mix for even more vitamin C.

The pan full of herbs simmered away on the Rayburn while my father returned to bed and fell into a heavy sleep. I cooked a lamb chop casserole to feed my parents over the weekend and vegetables to go with the bolognaise sauce I’d prepared at home for lunch that day.

With no hand blitzer, the syrup responded well to an ordinary potato masher, producing two pints of deep, thick, rose liquid. I’d found five jars and bottles to sterilise, producing enough syrup to keep everyone going over the next few months. It tasted good as well.

The carers were intrigued. Both hail from Portugal.

“Did you buy the ingredients?” asked Maria, who told me she wanted to take a Chinese herbal medicine course next year.  I shook my head, wondering how it would even be possible to source what I had foraged when the nearest town is sixteen miles away and there is no internet access at the farm for online shopping.

My father had previously given Maria a dose of the cough syrup I made for my mother’s constant, mucous-driven cough when she was suffering. She said it had cured her.

“You should sell all this, it’s delicious!” Maria enthused but I explained I was more interested in teaching others to make their own medicines rather than entering the maze of commercial regulation.

It’s been a challenging month and I am still spending a great deal of time resting, although probably not enough! My father is much improved and grateful we were there when he needed us and for the full store cupboards and freezers. Although the text books will all tell you to pick herbs when they are dry, there will be times when much can be gained by foraging in the rain.

How long will it last?

We are constantly bombarded with information about ‘shelf life’ and ‘sell by dates’. If we buy anything herbal it will come with a “Best before end” date which can range from three months to two years. Herbalists talk about plants which lose their efficacy quickly and those which are still being used decades later. For a newcomer to herbs it can be very confusing.

If you are reliant on other producers for all your herbal products then you are constrained by their printed labels saying how long something will last. You can make your own assessment of vibrancy by comparing what the colour, smell and taste of the product when you first purchased it compared with how it looks/smells/tastes now.  Be aware that once you expose the product to the air, it will start to denature. The more you use something, the sooner it will lose its potency.

This won’t be a problem if you’ve bought something to use regularly over a couple of weeks or months but it could be a disappointment if you open it and leave the lid off for a relatively long period of time, then seal it and go back to it a year or so later and discover it has “gone off”.

It’s helpful to look at each kind of herbal produce in turn.

Fresh Herbs

Wisdom passed down from ancient times exhorts us to pick herbs when they are dry but before the midday sun stresses the herb. If you want to experiment with timings, try picking late morning and late afternoon and see how the herb changes in those few hours. Once you have picked as much as you want, make sure your produce is not left exposed to bright sunshine or you may lose everything you have gathered. When you are picking don’t use plastic for storage of any length, cloth bags or wicker baskets are best. The plant will continue to respire even after you have cut it from its roots and the water vapour produced needs to be able to escape. Keeping it in a plastic bag overnight can mean you return to a wet, soggy mess.

You may want to use or process your fresh herb immediately or you can deliberately leave them to wilt for several days to remove excess water content before you process your harvest. Wilting time will vary depending on the amount of water present in the herb. I have seen watercress and milk thistle leaves reduce by ½ to 2/3rds of their volume in half an hour in warm weather or hot room. Most green, leafy herbs can be left to wilt for up to three days in a cool, shady, airy place.

Dried aerial parts should retain the vibrancy of colour once dried. Leaves and flowers should be removed from their stems once dry because the stem may not have dried completely but should be stored as completely as possible. Once you crush a leaf it releases its essential oil into the air and is lost, so if you crush or powder a dried herb it will not retain its potency for as long as the whole counterpart.

If you need to turn a herb into powder, do small amounts as and when needed. This is especially true of oil bearing seeds such as hemp or flax. Once ground the oil starts to turn rancid after three hours so should be consumed immediately.

If you don’t live in a climate where long periods of dry weather are possible then there will be times when you have to pick in the wet or lose your entire crop. If this happens you will have to use an external heat source to remove excess moisture. Rayburns (small agas) and hot water tanks/airing cupboards can be really useful for this but few people have access to them anymore. If you do need to dry in an oven, always dry on the lowest heat and leave the oven door open so the moisture can escape. NEVER dry in a microwave (unless you are only drying for culinary purposes and don’t care what is happening to the chemistry of the plant material) as you will end up cooking the plant, not drying it.

Seeds, roots and barks are different. You may find, if collected during autumn or winter, the increased moisture content of the seasonal air will make them prone to mould development if left in a cool place without washing and drying. Yeast spores present in the air can cause fermentation as part of the cycle of decay. This is especially true with elderberries and conkers will develop a surface mould if left untouched for a week. Smaller seeds such as fennel, dill or coriander should be picked dry and dried some more before storing but will last for several years.

Seeds, roots and barks do take more time to prepare before drying but if the preparation is done effectively so drying is complete, the finished product should last several years. The more time and effort you put in beforehand, the longer it will keep.

Dried herbs

Most dried herbs will keep their potency for twelve months and may start to lose colour and scent during their second or third year. It is colour, scent and taste which will alert you to the potency. Some herbs such as lemon balm, tarragon, dill, fennel and St John’s wort flowers are only supposed to have a shelf life of six months and people are advised to think of other ways of preserving them such as freeze drying, herbal ice cubes or frozen herbal butters.

Some herbs such as cleavers and chickweed have such high water content that they are not supposed to be effective if dried at all but herbalists in countries with very short growing seasons such as Finland have disproved this. If you are making oils or tinctures with these herbs you should use them fresh and not dried.

If you grow and dry your own delicate herbs and keep them in glass jars away from the light (I put brown paper bags around my glass jars) you will find they are active well after their supposed use by date.  I’ve seen health food shops sell straw coloured calendula petals kept in clear glass near the shop window which are obviously useless yet my homegrown petals keep their orange vibrancy for longer than twelve months, as does my St John’s wort, red clover and bergamot.

Herbs don’t realise they have a use by date. They will continue to act many years after being dried. Henriette Kress had a case where she gave five year old St John’s wort dried flowers to a client which worked perfectly well and Jim Macdonald has some fourteen year old calamas root which he chews. He said there wasn’t quite as much “zing” in the old root as a freshly dried one but the essence of the plant was still there.

If you find yourself in a situation where you need a dried herb but only have something two or three years old which has lost most of its colour and smell then double the amount you would normally infuse to provide a medicinal product.

Teas

A “normal” herbal tea brewed for ten minutes should keep in the fridge for 24 hours. This is useful if you are brewing larger amounts to use throughout the day or for eye washes, antiseptic washes etc.

Decoctions

A cooled decoction should keep in a fridge for up to 48 hours.

Syrups and cordials

Concentrated (i.e. reduced by evaporation to 1/8^th of its original volume) medicinal syrups made with 1:2 proportion of tea: sugar should keep indefinitely if placed in sterile bottles and lids. Syrups made with 1:1 proportions of tea: sugar or honey in a sterile bottle and lid should keep for at least a year unopened and possibly two. Once opened, they should be kept in a fridge and used within six months.

Cordials made with 1:1 proportions should have the same shelf life as a syrup. Anything made with reduced sugar content will have a much shorter shelf life.

Floral waters

Floral waters are used externally and normally have 1:0.25 decoction: alcohol proportion (i.e. ¼ of the volume of decoction of alcohol is added as a preservative). I have kept these for two years successfully without opening.

Decocted bitter

If you make a bitter by decocting the plant material and preserving this with alcohol measuring ¼ of the volume of the original decoction it should last for 18 months to 2 years before it starts to grow something when stored in a cool, dark place and unopened. If the mixture becomes cloudy, discard.

Flower essence

Flower essences made by sun infusion and preserved 1:1 with brandy should keep for up to two years if unopened. Once diluted with spring or distilled water, it should be used within a week or sooner.

Tinctures

One of the major factors in the shelf life of your tincture is how concentrated your extracting alcohol and how often you open the bottle/jar/container. Unopened, tinctures can last for ten years or more depending on which plant you have used. Tinctures should also be stored in brown or green glass bottles and kept away from heat or light.

If you leave plant matter in the alcohol for longer than the prescribed period (most people macerate for three weeks, some for six) you tend to extract extra tannins which you may not want. Certainly when I forgot to strain a jar of vervain and skullcap for over 12 months, the tinctures were both very dark brown and exceptionally bitter which meant I'd lost the beautiful shining aquamarine of the skullcap. I used them both but in formulae rather than alone.

Some herbalists have found that leaving the fresh herb in the tincture has increased the longevity and are now doing this as their practice. This works best when the herb restricts fungal and bacterial growth as part of its repertoire.

Elixirs

Elixirs are made with equal proportions of brandy and honey. As such they should last at least ten years and probably longer. I do leave fresh elderberries in elixirs and haven’t had a problem with fermentation as long as they are kept cool.

Honeys

Honey has been found in 2,000 year old Egyptian tombs still smelling and tasting like honey. Infused honey made from watery plant material may only last a couple of years. I recently found a year old jar of rosehip honey with the chopped hips still in it starting to grow mould on the top but once this was scraped off the rest of it was fine. Electuaries made from dried, powdered herbs should keep for as long as it takes you to eat it. I have one jar I use for demonstrations which is over six years old and still tasting the same as it did when I first made it.

Oils

If you make sun infused oils and don’t keep the plant material submerged they will grow mould and the oil will have to be discarded immediately. If you make double infused heated oils from fresh plant matter, you need to pour off the water globules before storing or the oil will go off more quickly. Unopened jars of double infused oils should last two to three years. St John’s wort oil will keep much longer if kept unopened in wide necked jars.

If you keep opening jars of oils, they will go off sooner.

Salves

The shelf life of salves can be increased by adding Vitamin e capsules or essential oils. This is personal preference. I don’ t use any preservative and my salves, unopened will last up to two years and 8-12 months once opened.

Vinegars

My experience with infused herbal vinegars is that, because of their acidic environment, they keep indefinitely. I have never had a herbal vinegar “go off”. Some vinegars, such as chive flower, will lose their colour after twelve months.

Glycerites

I don’t make glycerites so have no experience of their shelf life.

Crampbark, native or not?

Before the new owners of the farm next to my parents moved in, they decided to plant several acres of woodland. As the first triangle of arable field was transformed, I stopped to chat with the foresters’ foreman. He reeled off a list of “native English woodland trees” including hawthorn, blackthorn, wild cherry and Guelder rose (vibernum opulum).

“You’ll be able to come and harvest here if you like,” he offered but I told him I already had access to all his varieties on my own land. 

I took it for granted that his idea of native woodlands species really were indigenous plants. Guelder rose is one of my favourite Sanctuary trees. I was first introduced to it during a tour of a Birmingham herbalist’s garden back in the 1990s.

“Do you know crampbark?” she asked me and when I told her I had read about it, she remarked what a useful herb it was. “The bark is amazing,” she said. “When you tincture it, the maceration turns red.” She showed me the bark pigment and said no herbalist should be without it.

The following year I included a small crampbark bush in my order from Poyntzfield Herb Nursery in Scotland. It was quite small and delicate but grew well enough. The following year I was searching for short leave lime and spindle trees. The nearest nursery was in Northern Derbyshire so I added another crampbark and two red currant bushes to my collection. This bush, although the same age as my original, was twice the size and the branches were twice as thick, although everything else was the same.

They both flowered well in springtime. It was at this point I gathered the bark since I’d read that crampbark was the only tree where you harvested bark when the tree was flowering rather than during their dormant period. As my friend had promised, the tincture was deep red and proved very effective in reducing nocturnal leg cramps. In subsequent years I harvested bark in winter and there was no noticeable difference in the efficacy of the tincture.

My final Guelder rose came from a tree nursery in Kent and lives in the hedge in my Solihull garden. It is completely overshadowed by hawthorn trees above and gets a minimum of light but it is still growing albeit slowly. After two seasons it has yet to produce flowers or berries but I live in hope. The other two trees took several years before flowering but now they are prolific in both flowers and the bitter, crimson berries which appear to be eschewed by the local bird population as there were still berries left from 2013 when the flowers came out this spring.

If Guelder rose were indeed a native English species, its herbal use should be well documented. I decided to start my investigation with Culpepper but he was strangely silent. Anne MacIntyre only talked about Native American uses, which seemed strange if the tree had been growing in England for many centuries.

When I finally looked at the history of Guelder Rose, I discovered it was introduced to England from Dutch province of Guelderland, possibly in the sixteenth century when John Parkinson was writing his herbal encyclopedia. England was closely allied with Holland at this time as the nearest Protestant kingdom in Europe and new species of plants and trees were being introduced to aristocratic gardens from both Europe and the new world. Horse chestnuts were also imported during this century and both trees have been integrated into the British flora.

Bartram gives the keynote of the Guelder rose as cramp. He notes the actions as antispasmodic, astringent, nerve and muscle relaxant and sedative. He lists the uses as muscular cramps, pains in abdomen, womb, ovaries, back, stomach, intestines, bladder. Convulsions in children. Epididymitis. Painful menstruation, flooding menses of menopause. Polymyalgia. Nervous irritability, angina, intermittent claudication, arteritis, palpitation. Earache. Acute bronchitis, asthma. Muscular rheumatism. Bedwetting.

Anne MacIntyre tells us that crampbark’s active constituents are coumarins, catechin, epicatechin, bitters (Viburnin) arbutin, valeric acid, salicylates, tannins and resin. She also warns that raw berries are poisonous but can be eaten if cooked and any plant extract should be avoided if you take anticoagulant drugs.

Bartram’s list of crampbark uses are impressive Annie makes them more understandable by breaking them down into parts of the body. She also expands their uses based on Native American and other cultures.

Digestion: Relaxes tension and spasm. Relieves stress related disorders such as colic, nausea, wind, abdominal cramps and IBS.

These uses mirror that of chamomile and it makes me wonder whether early English herbalists would have used chamomile where Native Americans would use crampbark because each were easily available in their locality. I’m currently about to purchase my copy of John Parkinson’s Encyclopaedia and I’m hoping to discover what he wrote about the tree.

Circulation: Dilates the arteries, reduces blood pressure. Used for palpitations and angina. Releases tension in arteries, relieves leg cramps, helpful in Reynaud’s syndrome.

This makes me wonder how motherwort and crampbark would work together to alleviate the palpitations felt by menopausal women.

Musculoskeletal system: Used as a general music relaxant for voluntary and involuntary muscular cramp and tension. Used for tension headaches.

These uses encourage me to try making a crampbark oil this winter. After the success of the St John’s wort and agrimony salve for relieving arm muscle tension, knee pain and period pain, I’m wondering if the addition of crampbark or even a crampbark salve on its own would be even more effective. This might be really helpful for children and adults with problems of limb spasticity where tremors and spasms are a constant challenge.

Reproductive system: This was the major use for Native American and pioneer women. Crampbark can be used as a both a uterine sedative and tonic. Annie writes that aesculetin and scopoletin have a powerful antispasmodic action relieving cramps. Salicin is also a good pain reliever but should be avoided by anyone who is allergic to aspirin. Crampbark can be used in spasmodic dysmenorrhea for bearing-down pain, back and thigh pain, heavy bleeding, endometriosis, threatened/repeated miscarriage and to prepare for labour. It helps to prevent uterine irritability, over-strong contractions, false labour pains and afterpains. It also prevents excessive flow during menopause.

Crampbark is also used as an antispasmodic for benign prostatic hypertrophy. Its astringent actions is also helpful in prolapse.

Respiratory system: Crampbark relaxes spasm in bronchi and can be useful for soothing harsh irritating coughs and asthma as an adjuvant/aid to other medication.

My crampbark trees are currently providing a glorious autumn feast of colour in the Cotswolds.  I had cause to be grateful to them back in the early summer when I inadvertently stepped into a rabbit hole whilst picking elderflowers. I thought I must have been electrocuted from the searing pain at the top of my calf but I guess that’s what it feels like if you hyper-extend a muscle without warning. When it became almost impossible to walk, I set about collecting some crampbark leaves and flowers and made myself a tea. I drank half and put a fomentation around my leg. I repeated both several times during the evening.

The next morning I was able to move slowly and the pain had diminished. By the afternoon I was able to stand and dig. The following day I was walking normally. This, to me, seemed like a miraculous recovery due entirely to the crampbark. Now I know so much more about this plant I shall be using it in many different situations.