can be eaten raw or cooked. It is rich in iron, especially the upper leaf portion. The young tips can be cooked like spinach.
Chickweed is a good healer and soother for all types of external and internal irritations. The bruised leaves in coconut or other oil make a good ointment for skin irritation. Chickweed is considered a remedy for an irritated digestive system, ulcers, internal inflammation, irritated genitals, skin sores and eye sties. It can be used as a tea, a lotion or a poultice held in place by larger leaves such as mullein. It is also useful for coughs, hoarseness and minor lung irritation. Chickweed baths are soothing.
Chickweed
Chicory
Cichorium intybus
Asteraceae
Chicory (or succory, or bachelor’s buttons) is a common roadside plant. It can be easily identified when it flowers in midsummer in blue dandelion-like heads. It prefers dry open ground, has long wiry stems, and has leaves at the base similar to dandelion leaves.
The young leaves and shoots are commonly used in salads and as a pot-herb (especially blanched to remove the slight bitterness), and the roots are eaten raw or roasted. Chicory is often used with coffee or as a coffee substitute, along with dandelion and burdock roots. (Gather older roots of these plants, slice, roast and grind.)
Chicory is especially rich in vitamins A and C.
A tea made from the root is said to be good for an upset stomach and kidney and liver complaints. The bruised leaves can be used as a poultice for swelling and inflammation. A syrup made from the root is reportedly a good laxative for children.
Chicory
Cinquefoil
Potentilla spp.
Rosaceae
There are over 20 species of cinquefoil (meaning “five finger”) in BC. The characteristic features of the various cinquefoils are the yellow buttercup-like flowers and the five-fingered toothed leaves on branched stalks. Some species are several feet tall, while others are small and shrubby.
Cinquefoil roots can be eaten like potatoes—boiled or roasted. Tea made from the roots is a little bitter.
Medicinally, the root is used in lotions, gargles and syrups, and as an infusion. The root is boiled in vinegar to be used for sores and inflammation, decocted with honey for hoarseness and coughs, and boiled in wine to ease pain in the joints. It is known to reduce bleeding and is used both externally and internally for this purpose. It is also used as an eyewash, for diarrhea, for cramps in the stomach or lungs (taken both internally and as a compress), for colic, for ulcers in the stomach, for toothache and for spongy gums and loose teeth.
Cinquefoil
Clover
Trifolium spp.
Fabaceae
Clover is a familiar wayside plant with leaflets of three and flower heads of purple, pink, white or yellow.
The whole plant is edible, although the raw flowers are hard to digest in quantity. (More flowers can be eaten if cooked or soaked for several hours in strong salt water.) Its high protein content makes clover very nutritious. The seeds and flowers are excellent steeped in boiled water as tea. (Leaves and flowers should never be boiled, as boiling destroys vitamins; instead, pour boiling water over the leaves or flowers. Roots and other hard plant parts usually need to be boiled.)
Clover tea is good for colds, coughs, bronchitis and nervous conditions. One cough syrup uses flowers, onion juice and warm honey; another uses flowers, new sprigs of white pine, mullein leaves, cherry bark and honey. Flowers, boiled and applied as a poultice, are said to be a remedy for athlete’s foot.
Red clover
Clustered broomrape
Orobanche fasiculata
Orobanchaceae
Broomrape grows in dry, sandy soil mainly east of the Cascades. It is parasitic on the roots of other plants such as sagebrush. It is usually purple-tinged but may be yellowish. Leaves are scale-like and in an alternate pattern. Flowers, first appearing in early May, are two-lipped, sticky and hairy. The stem is very scaly and coarse-haired. Broomrape can grow several feet high.
The entire plant, including the roots, can be eaten raw or roasted. The juice or a decoction of young branches or seeds, or just the powdered seed, is supposed to ease pain of the joints and hips and swelling of the spleen, as well as cleanse the kidneys and bladder. The plant has been used as a toothache remedy, to kill lice, and as a skin cleanser (decocted or boiled in oil).
Coltsfoot or butterbur
Petasites spp.
Asteraceae
Coltsfoot leaves may be triangular, kidney-shaped or almost round depending on the species. They are entirely basal, toothed and often deeply cleft, white, woolly underneath and often a foot across. Flowers are purplish-white, sweet-scented and in soft loose heads on the ends of long, scaly-bracted stalks. They appear in March or soon after the snow is gone, sometimes before the leaves grow. Coltsfoot has a thick, creeping rootstalk and grows to a height of two feet.
The young foliage and flowers make a good pot-herb. Salt can be obtained by wilting the leaves in hot sun, rolling them with the stems into tight balls and ashing them on cedar bark over slow coals. The ashes are almost pure salt.
Another plant termed coltsfoot is Tussilago farfara. It also blooms in early spring before leaves appear and has large, toothed, basal leaves that are white and woolly underneath; the flower stalk consists of numerous scale-like leaves. The leaves are round, and the flowers have numerous ray flowers. It prefers moist, heavy soils and is reported only on Vancouver Island. This coltsfoot has been much used in cough and lung medicines and smoking mixtures.
Coltsfoot
Comfrey
Symphytum officinale
Boraginaceae
Comfrey (also called knitbone) is a perennial that’s seldom found wild in BC, but because of its potential importance and easy cultivation, we have included it. The root is oblong and fleshy, the tall stalk hollow and covered with prickly hairs. The lower leaves are large and covered with rough hair, which causes itching; the leaves decrease in size as they grow up the stem. Pairs of drooping flowers, which are creamy yellow or purple, bloom most of the summer. Comfrey grows best in low, moist ground.
The whole plant is used externally as a hot poultice to reduce swollen parts around fractured bones and to soothe pain in any other tender, inflamed part. (This includes insect bites, sprains, bruises,
