Coltsfoot: a medicinal plant spanning centuries
Coltsfoot: a medicinal plant spanning centuries
Sometimes things are not as they appear.
After seeing this bright little flower gracing the edge of the stream we cross in early spring for many years now, I finally went to the effort of looking it up. Typing in “native yellow wildflower march blooming wet” I only found the marsh marigold, which is indeed a lovely little native perennial but the flowers gave away that it was not the same plant.
So, I left out “native” and after my vision became a little fuzzy, ended up finding my answer. This plant is in fact an interloper: it is commonly called coltsfoot (because of the shape of its leaf) and botanically known as Tussilago farfara. Brought here by settlers from Europe (but also happily growing in Asia, North Africa, China and the far east of Russia), it was used as a medicinal remedy for coughs and sore throats, beneficial indeed to those hardy souls who came here in those early days braving our cold and damp climate.
The flowers appear in the early spring, to us in late March or early April, atop fleshy erect stems and continue to bloom for 7-10 days. Coltsfoot is in the daisy family (Asteracea, known also as Compositae), and indeed the flowers mimic the look and sunny disposition of dandelions and ornamental daisies like marigolds and sneezeweed. This plant, however, is diminutive, reaching only 3-8” tall (10-20 cm). As you can see from the first photo, it prefers damp, even wet, sites and sets down its roots so deeply, you’d have to dig ten feet down to retrieve the ends of them! So it is a great plant to help stabilize slopes. The seeds are tiny and can be widely dispersed by wind, which also contributes to its wide range and in places, its potential to become invasive.
The blooms attract honey bees who are attracted by its nectar and it is also a food source for the larvae of several species of moth.
This plant has a long history of being used medicinally in Europe and China. But it also contains pyrrolizidine alkaloids, a compound mostly found in its flowering stems, which can be toxic to the liver if ingested in large amounts. Most users boil the stems and roots to create a chest-soothing tea (to treat ailments like asthma, emphysema, coughs and other respiratory illnesses), and it has also been shown to strengthen the immune system. A poultice can be made from its flowers to treat skin conditions like eczema, ulcers and inflammations due to bites.
Not just happy with having medicinal properties, this plant can also be eaten; its flower buds and flowers can be sprinkled on salads, raw or cooked, and it is said to have an aniseed flavour — not everyone’s cup of tea but distinctive for sure. The leaves, which stretch to six inches wide, resemble those of Ligularia but are more rigid and almost rubbery in texture with velvety white undersides. Young leaves can be cooked and eaten as a vegetable (best washed after boiling to get rid of the bitterness) or used raw in salads. And strange as it may seem, dried, charred leaves have been used as a salt substitute.
You would be right if you thought a plant such as this has an ancient history. Pedanius Dioscorides, who lived between 40 and 90 A.D., was the Greek physician, botanist and pharmacologist who wrote the highly influential five volume De Materia Medica, an encyclopedia of herbal medicine. This 960 page book was the go-to pharmacological manual for physicians and healers for the next 1500 years. In it he mentions Tussilago, calling it Bechion (or Bechium) from the ancient Greek and describes how it is used medicinally:
The leaves (pounded into small pieces and applied) cure erysipela [streptococcal skin infection] and all inflammations. It is dried and burned, and the smoke from it is inhaled through a funnel to cure those troubled with a dry cough or difficult breathing: opening the mouth wide they take the smoke in at the mouth and swallow it down. It breaks up abscesses in the chest, and the burning root (inhaled) does the same. Boiled in honey water and taken as a drink it expels dead embryos.
Dioscorides contemporary, the Roman known as Pliny the Elder, has also become immortal through his substantial work entitled Naturalis Historia, his Natural History encyclopedia; this is the only one of several books he authored to have survived. Pliny the Elder was not a physician or a botanist, rather an army commander and friend to Emperor Vespasian, but did have an insatiable desire to understand and record contemporary Roman knowledge and so his huge encyclopedia centred around what was known of botany, zoology, astronomy, geology and mineralogy of that time.
Pliny the Elder was described as a “corpulent” man who had a chronic respiratory condition, perhaps asthma, and it was either this or a poor heart that led to his death. It is said that he ventured too close to the ash-laden air of Mount Vesuvius in an heroic attempt to rescue friends but other historians aren’t convinced and chalk up his death to a heart attack, rather than this selfless endeavour.
Nevertheless, Pliny the Elder wrote of Tussilago in his Natural History and described its use thus:
The smoke of this plant in a dry state, inhaled by the aid of a reed and swallowed, is curative, they say, of chronic cough; it is necessary, however, at each inhalation to take a draught of raisin wine.
Clearly the raisin wine was to dispel the acrid bitterness…or maybe just to make you drunk enough to pass out so you’d no longer cough. Or maybe he just liked the sugar.
Hildegard von Bingen, or St Hildegard as she became known — 12th century German Benedictine abbess, writer, composer, mystic, herbalist, visionary and saint — wrote in her Physica, that drinking a concoction of coltsfoot, plantain root and mistletoe from a pear tree would “soften the liver” after over-indulging in rich foods. Interesting since we now know that this plant can be toxic to the liver…
And all through the Middle Ages and into the 20th century, Tussilago was the go-to plant for coughs and colds; indeed, today you can buy “coltsfoot rock”, which is a hard candy that is meant to soothe asthma and calm coughs. It has been made by Stockley’s Sweets in England since 1918 and you can actually purchase it online.
Not sure how appetizing they are…maybe one of my English friends will let me know!
Who knew that researching this plant would start at a stream’s edge, lead me back to Greek herbal medicine, Roman natural history, the German herbalist and visionary abbess St Hildegard and then present day coltsfoot rock candy?
