Medicine plant of the day 2025

[Peanut]

Went to town today so I took the opportunity to do a little plant hunting on the way home. 1st up, found some yellowroot. Hasn’t budded yet, it better hurry. It usually blooms by the first of march.

Had to be careful given my propensity to fall in creeks and rivers. Today the water looked extra cold!

Usnea was laying everywhere in the woods. The recent snow took down thousands of dead limbs. Especially pines, saw lots of pine limbs on the ground.

And last, old reliable, lance leaf plantain. I can find plantain every month of the year. Here it is, nice and green even though it was covered by snow a week before last, temps in the teens all last week. Yet it’s still growing.

 

[RJ2019]

I pulled some of the elderberries out of the freezer to dehydrate today. I may dry the entire bag, or maybe make tincture. Still thinking on it. My oregano also needs a haircut bad, not the typical time of year for harvesting done but it needs to be done.
Out in the wild, I see the yarrow starting to come out, lots of mullein and of course the plantain that basically never dies here. There's some small California poppy seedlings around, too.

 

[Peanut]

Pressed out 2 and a half quarts of tincture tonight. 2qts of Sweet Leaf and a half quart of Catnip. Both wonderful medicines that treat a wide range of issues.

Thanks @Grimm still love the veggi/fruit press you told us all about. It works great for pressing tinctures. Makes what was a messy chore into a simple, clean and neat process.

https://www.homesteadingforum.org/threads/monarda-sweet-leaf.10258/

https://www.homesteadingforum.org/threads/catnip.9994/

 

[Grimm]

Pressed out 2 and a half quarts of tincture tonight. 2qts of Sweet Leaf and a half quart of Catnip. Both wonderful medicines that treat a wide range of issues.

Thanks @Grimm still love the veggi/fruit press you told us all about. It works great for pressing tinctures. Makes what was a messy chore into a simple, clean and neat process.

https://www.homesteadingforum.org/threads/monarda-sweet-leaf.10258/

https://www.homesteadingforum.org/threads/catnip.9994/

View attachment 173119

Glad you like it!

 

[Peanut]

Pressed out 3.5 quarts of Boneset tincture this morning. Boneset it the reason so few rural americans died during the 1918 flu pandemic, they had plenty of it. Boneset was the most recommended flu medicine by doctors in rural communities for decades. The US army used it to treat malaria from the 1850’s to the 1930’s.

It is just as effective against covid, saved many lives among those who knew about it.

https://www.homesteadingforum.org/threads/boneset.9477/

 

[Grimm]

Pressed out 3.5 quarts of Boneset tincture this morning. Boneset it the reason so few rural americans died during the 1918 flu pandemic, they had plenty of it. Boneset was the most recommended flu medicine by doctors in rural communities for decades. The US army used it to treat malaria from the 1850’s to the 1930’s.

It is just as effective against covid, saved many lives among those who knew about it.

https://www.homesteadingforum.org/threads/boneset.9477/

View attachment 173144

Tincture recipe, please.

 

[Peanut]

Tincture recipe, please.

It’s just a standard 1:2 volume tincture. 1-part plant by weight, 2-parts menstruum by weight for fresh plant.

Boneset can be tricky, it can be a lot dryer than it seems. It’ll absorb all the menstruum and I’ll have to add more. Usually ends up being a 1:3 ratio. Also, it dries rapidly when harvested, faster than most plants. Annnd… it loses a lot of its potency with drying so for tincture I try to process it quickly.

That said the traditional way to use it, is to dry it and make tea. For personal reasons I try to avoid drying plants and making teas. It’s and energy issue because I have cfs. I only have a finite amount of energy each summer and try to tincture a lot of species. If I dry a species then I have to harvest and dry every year. Tinctures last several years, so I don’t have to harvest a species each summer.

This was last summer’s harvest of boneset. I was harvesting and making tincture for 3 other families so needed help to process this much… below.