After drinking coltsfoot tea to help a cough, I could have guessed it would be on the list of herbs used to make cough mixture. About the only one I could have predicted. The rest came as a surprise.
Fellow student Jill hard at work on a herbal cough mixture
We started by inspecting what looked initially to be a bag of old twigs. Wrong. These were not just any old twigs, but ones with an enticing aroma of resin and a history of foreign travel. Balm of Gilead (Populus gileadensis) buds - such a glorious name! - are a virtual must-have in traditional cough mixtures.
Balm of Gilead is a popular ingredient in traditional and herbal cough mixtures
Elecampane (Inula helenium) is another popular ingredient for clearing up racking coughs, we discovered. Not surprising, considering its name means flower of the sun. I couldn’t help remembering last term’s experience of decocting a mixture of elecampane roots into water. Then making the mistake of drinking some of the resulting potion. Urgh! However, the stuff has important medicinal uses.
White horehound (Marrubium vulgare) is also, like elecampane, bitter. As I discovered after chewing part of a root. Why do I never learn? I know. It seemed like a good idea at the time..... The taste did seem vaguely familiar and I soon discovered why - it features in some of the famous Potters’ cough remedies (no, nothing to do with the wizard).
Dried herbs can be effective in clearing up nasty coughs
It was a relief to come to hyssop (Hyssopus officinalis) after the elecampane and white horehound. For those unfamiliar with the plant, it’s a pleasant, sweet-tasting herb. And retains traces of its pretty blue flowers even after drying.
Next on the list was iceland moss (Cetraria islandica). Not, confusingly, a moss at all, despite the name. Rather, a lichen conveniently full of sugars – and a soothing ingredient found in many cough mixtures.
We take it in turns to stir the potions. George lends a hand with some elderberries.
You might associate liquorice (Glycyrrhiza glabra) mainly with All-Sorts and Bertie Bassett. But the plant is more versatile than many suspect. Its applications extend beyond confectionary into cough mixtures. Liquorice is a potent anti-tussive, (spot the technical lingo), meaning it works against coughs by soothing the respiratory tract.
I’d always thought of lobelia (Lobelia inflata) as an innocuous sort of plant. Wrong again. Just because it’s the sort of thing you might find in a hanging baskets doesn’t mean it’s all pretty floral displays. Lobelia is a kind of ‘red alert’ for botanists and herbalists, graded Schedule Three under the use of dangerous chemicals. Yes, kill or cure.
Only professionals are allowed to dispense lobelia's potentially fatal products. Who would have thought it? Nobody should chew or smoke the foliage of lobelia. And just in case you still feel tempted to rip them from the nearest herbaceous border, I have to warn you that the leaves are highly acrid and nauseating. But good at clearing up a nasty cough - provided they don’t kill you first.
Marshmallow (Althaea officinalis) is another time-honoured faithful in the cough mixture repertoire. Its pectin (gelling agent), mucilage (sugar) and flavenoids (anti-oxidants that zap nasty free radicals) make it suited to cough remedies. And, yes, once upon a time original marshmallow sweets really did contain parts of the plant that gave them their name. Sweet-tasting mullein (Verbascum thapsus), a plant also as candlewort, also features in cough mixtures. So too do pleurisy roots (Asclepias tuberosa), the vibrant native American cough remedy herb also known as butterfly weed.
So, now you know. The next time you're shopping for a herbal cough medicine, anything you choose will probably contain at least some of these plants. For me this was an eye-opener? For you too?