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It’s still very early in the gardening season here in northwest Montana. Things are growing but we’re not harvesting much beyond herbs and greens at this point. We’re also harvesting weeds. We make use of dandelion, but there’s also lots of others coming up. All those weeds that tend to annoy those folks looking for a perfect lawn are some of my favorite companions, the useful weed: Plantain among them.
Plantain grows most everywhere and once you learn to identify it, no doubt you’ll be seeing it beneath your feet all the time. It’s full of nutrition and completely edible. The young leaves are the best for eating as the bigger leaves tend to be bitter and a little tough. Beyond the young leaves being a great addition to salad, the plant has numerous medicinal benefits:
- Fresh plantain works immediately on bee stings. Just chew on the leaf a bit and place it right on the sting to help draw out the stinger and venom.
- Rosemary Gladstar suggests using the seeds as a laxative.
- Last summer, I had the privilege of attending an herbal seminar lead by Paul Bergner in which he mentioned treating leaky gut with Plantain and Calendula tea. I’ve been drinking some several times a week to help with my Rheumatoid Arthritis, which some folks believe is caused by leaky gut. I can’t say definitively that it’s helped but I know for sure my issues haven’t gotten worse.
- Plantain is always one of the core herbs in my homemade healing salve. My own personal healing salve is a mixture of infused oils (usually plantain, lavender, dandelion, comfrey, & calendula) from foraged herbs and tends to vary each and every year a little bit.
- In Backyard Medicine, plantain tincture is recommended for coughs, irritable bowel, hemorrhoids, and hay fever.
Additional Resources:
- The Essential Herbal for Natural Health – Plantain is included in remedies for cradle cap, made into suppositories, included in cyst dissolving oil, and much more.
- Don’t have access to plantain? You can buy dried plantain from Starwest Botanicals
Do you make use of plantain? If so, what’s your favorite way? If not, are you inspired too after reading all of its many uses.
How “à propos” this morning, I JUST looked up plantain and it’s medicinal uses a few days ago. They are every where on our plot and I was hoping that they would be useful. Boy was I happy to find some info and I’m very appreciative for all the links here as well.
I’m so glad to know this was timely info for you. I can’t wait to hear about how you use up the plantain!
I use plantain for sore throat: CChew young stems for the juice,acts like the numing stuff in chloreseptic.
We make a salve out of just the Plantain infused olive oil with beeswax and vitamin e oil. We use it on EVERYTHING! Bug bites, bruises, scratches, cuts, rashes, and so much more. A co-worker’s sister had severe stomach ulsers and we got her to putting a leaf or two of Plantain in her salad every day and she was so happy that the pain was going away. We’ve also had a friend who put our salve on her son’s diaper rash when he was a baby when the ointment their doctor gave them wasn’t working and had it cleared up in no time.
Thank you so much for the additional tips! Such amazing stuff right at our feet.
Do you dry it to keep on hand? Do you make your tea from dried or fresh plantain?
I do dry it for winter but make fresh tea when it’s available.
I made a tincture of the plantain with comfrey, clove oil and lavender oil and it has been quite amazing with the bug bites that normally flare up to quite an extent. Not easy when we now live in a biodiverse country such as Latvia, which does unfortunately have a diversity of biting things, along with its beautiful meadowlands.
What a wonderful sounding remedy! I’m going to remember to give that a try, thanks for sharing that.
Plantain was first suggested to me by Grandfather Maple, an Abenaki elder, at a powwow in Newburyport, Massachusetts. While dancing in the circle, he had noticed that there were patches of it right beneath our feet and took the time to explain what a valuable plant it was.
How do you make tea out of plantain?
1 Tablespoon of dried leaves to 8 ounces of boiling water.
It’s one of the weeds we pick & feed our rabbits. They love it.
I’m English and use plantain for insect bites and have picked up some more uses. Thanks.