A More Beautiful Medicine
About a year
ago I wrote “Beautiful Medicine” a piece about a plant that every herbalist
affirms as highly medicinal, the beautiful cone flower. At the urging of Jessie my special Creek
Indian friend, I had used a three year old root of a cultivar “Pink Parasol”
from my flower garden to help heal a skin infection on my leg. We then began a discussion about the relative
potency of the species versus hybrids and wild versus cultivated. Pink Parasol is a cultivar of Echinacea purpurea,
one of three species used medicinally.
Interestingly a year later I can identify Pink Parasol as an F1 hybrid or
an unstable selection because its seedlings are now blooming prolifically in
the garden. And...
while the flowers of these seedlings are large and like a parasol, the
pink is paler and nearly half of the flowers are white.
Where there are stands of plant species, the seedlings are usually
unchanged from their parents. Here in
the Ozark foothills, a prime eco-system for cone flower, there are four species
of coneflower, Echinacea angustifolia, E. pallida, E. paradoxa, and E.
purpurea. They are all described as
threatened, though I had seen plenty of purpurea along nearby highways. They are all harvested for medicine. So, a year after our original discussion, Jessie brings me a taproot from
E. angustifolia. Here it is in its muddy
matrix along with two of its “hoyas angustas” for identification.
This is my first knowledge of E. angustifolia (narrow leaf).
Its leaves are indeed narrow and slick rather than furry like purpurea. My pink Parasol had a harvestable crown with
fibrous roots, but nothing like the taproot Jessie brought. He said the angustifolia’s flowers were
large, pink and beautiful. This picture is from the internet.
The root was mostly black inside, a sign of its potency. I had recently been bothered with gum and molar
discomfort, so I chewed a piece.
It tingled my mouth and soothed my gums.
Later I read that the Comanche Indians used Echinacea for toothaches. Jessie and some of my references caution that
Echinacea is powerful medicine, not to be overused. Its laborotory derived components are proven
to be anti-fungal, anti-viral and anti-biotic. Its action said to be immediate.
I recently drove by large stands of E. pallida in full bloom near
Fayetteville. It has a more slender
flower, very beautiful and I have since returned and collected seed from that
stand.
And the fourth cone flower found here is the desirable yellow, E. paradoxa.
With luck I
will be able to offer all four varieties next spring.
