Planting Medicine: Elecampane (Inula helenium)

My response to @naturalmedicine's Plant Medicine Exploration Prompt.

I'm new to Natural Medicine. Every type I try, it's the first time I've tried it. When I reached out to @mountainjewel (someone I've learned is called a wise woman) about some minor respiratory issues I'd been having, elecampane, mullein, and goldenseal were three of the things she recommended.

When I went to the herb store down the street, they didn't have elecampane, so I went with echinacea and mullein capsules. I've since learned that capsules are a particularly inefficient way to take mullein, but that's not today's subject.

They didn't have elecampane!

Someone sound the heroic trumpeting, because along came @sagescrub at Homesteaders Co-op offering elecampane seeds as part of his gift economy experiment. Granted, seeds are the long route to plant medicine, but it's better than nothing. I added them to my cart and explained my situation.

This guy sent me seeds, roots, and a tincture!

So, after looking around a lot on how to use this stuff, I started right off.

8-12 drops of tincture in a glass of water quickly alleviated my coughing. By "quickly," I mean "immediately." Coughing stopped for an hour or so, and when it started back up, the expectorant properties became very evident.

Chewing a small bit of the root was even more helpful. With effects lasting about an hour and a half to three hours, on top of the half hour that I spend chewing and sucking on it. This stuff is better than any commercial cough syrup I've used, and it tastes good too.

But what I wanted to focus on today was the planting of the seeds that @sagescrub so graciously provided.

Y'all know a sustainable medicine garden is a huge goal of mine, and God bless this man, he's provided most of the medicinal seeds that I'm using this year by a huge margin. Mullein, yarrow, St John's Wort, and many others, all from his store in @homesteaderscoop, Seeds of Abundance.

I found a pot from the well house that was left by a previous owner of this property. What a nice gift! There were actually three of them stacked very tightly together. It took me five minutes to gently pry them apart without breaking them.

I decided to get creative and try my own thing with the soil mix.

I used about half chicken run compost, a quarter worm castings, and a quarter burpee organic seed starting mix. I'll do a post on the chicken soil later.

Not knowing the specific meaning of "sow densely," I just put all the seeds in the five inch pot. This much seed:

Someone count em for me. I can't count past seven.

@sagescrub said he got around ten percent germination. With that many seeds, if ten percent come up, there'll be a bunch of plants for that little pot.

Everything I read said to cover the seeds lightly and firmly and to keep the soil damp. It's been about three days, and germination takes fourteen to forty days. So far I've been praying a blessing over the pot every day and giving water if needed. Elecampane likes moist soil.

When they come up, it'll be three years til I can harvest the roots. There's plenty of seeds to save and spread in that time so I can establish a multi-generational patch of this awesome medicine. During that waiting time, @porters has recommended Mountain Rose Herbs as a source for herbs, and I'll be feverishly combing every wild space I encounter for a sustainable source of elecampane.

After talking about in the @naturalmedicine discord (link below), a lot of people are interested in elecampane. Here's some information and links I've found on it as I've developed some fascination with this beautiful healing plant.

The source of this photo is a listing for elecampane seeds.

• "Elecampane literally, slowly but surely, strengthens the lungs." Source. This source has tons of information and other traditional uses from night sweats to amenorrhea. While rejuvenation is seldom mentioned in modern medicine, it has come up often when I've looked into the healing properties of natural remedies. Often, damage done is considered irreversible; especially concerning internal organs.
• "This herb also does much more as it also treats digestive ailments and alleviates pain." This source explains many more uses, and expresses some concern over our Western views of medicinal herbs and their uses. Well worth the read, it's a real mind opener.
• Here, Susun Weed says "I expect to see results from using elecampane within a day or less." While I didn't use her recommended high dosage "for acute situations," (wish I'd seen that, I would have drastically increased my dosage) I did notice very fast results when my symptoms were still mild. She does disagree with the first source, saying "I would only take elecampane if I had an active infection. It has little protective value. To protect the lungs, use mullein and organic whole milk."

While there's some discrepancy between sources in that regard, everyone I've read -both ancient and modern- agrees that elecampane is a powerful and invaluable medicinal herb.

One that I definitely want in my garden, and that I hope you'll be inspired to consider.

Be blessed.
Be fruitful.
Stay relevant.

Nate.

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