Herbs & Herbal Remedies @ Green Papaya

A Velvety Soother

Family: Scrophulariaceae; (includes Figwort, Foxglove, Eyebright)

Genus and Species: Verbascum Thapsus

Also known as: Candlewick Plant, Torches, Velvet Dock, Flannel Plant, Feltwort, Aaron’s Rod, Shepherd’s Staff, Lungwort

Parts used: Leaves, flowers, and roots

Mullein (it rhymes with sullen) grows everywhere and is hard to miss, yet few who encounter the velvet-leafed weed with its rod-like stem and striking yellow flowers appreciate its place in herbal Healing as a treatment for some respiratory complaints.

Candlewick Plant

When dried, mullein burns readily. Before the introduction of cotton, the ancients used its leaves and stems as candle wicks, giving it the name candlewick plant. The dried stems and flowers were also dipped in suet to make them burn longer, hence one popular name, torches.

Ancient cultures around the world considered mullein a magical protector against witchcraft and evil spirits. Like other herbs used in magic, mullein has a long history as a healer. Its botanical family name, the Scrophulariaceae, is derived from scrofula, an old term for chronically swollen lymph glands, later identified as a form of tuberculosis.

The Greek physician Dioscorides prescribed a decoction of mullein root in wine as a treatment for “lask and fluxes of the belly” (diarrhea) During the Middle Ages, the French used the herb to treat malandre, an animal disease that produces boils on horses’ necks. Malandre eventually became malen, and finally mullein.

Respiratory Remedy

Early on, this herb gained a reputation as a respiratory remedy, which endures to this day. In ancient India, Ayurvedic physicians prescribed mullein for cough. English herbalist Nicholas Culpeper wrote that gargling a mullein decoction “easeth toothache … and old cough.” And herbalist William Coles wrote farmers “give it their cattle against cough.

Colonists introduced mullein into North America, and the Indians quickly adopted it for coughs, bronchitis, and asthma. The accepted way to take mullein in early America seems ridiculous today: People smoked it.

The 19th-century Eclectics viewed mullein as a diuretic to treat water retention and as a stomach and respiratory soother, with mild pain-relieving and tranquilizing action. King’s American Dispensatory asserted: “Upon the upper portion of the respiratory tract, its influence is pronounced.” The Eclectics recommended mullein for colds, coughs, asthma, and tonsillitis, as well as diarrhea, hemorrhoids, and urinary tract infection.

Contemporary herbalists recommend mullein internally for coughs, colds, sore throat, and other respiratory complaints, and externally in a hot vinegar compress for hemorrhoids.

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, mullein was listed in the National Formulary as a cough remedy, but it was deleted in 1936 for lack of effectiveness. Nonetheless, in a 1986 survey of folk medicine in Indiana, Purdue researcher and herb expert Varro Tyler, Ph.D., found mullein “a very popular Hoosier remedy for all types of respiratory complaints.”