The all new third edition of a Peterson Field Guide to Medicinal Plants and Herbs: Eastern and Central North America.
Roger Tory Peterson (1919-1996) wrote and illustrated A Field Guide to Birds: Eastern and Central North America, now in its 6th edition, first published in 1934. He invented the modern 20th century concept of field guides, introducing generations of Americans to the flora, fauna and natural features of North America. Peterson Field Guides have now been for published 80 years.
The third edition of the Foster and Duke Field Guide to Medicinal Plants is expanded to include 60 new species not found in previous editions. The book includes 531 species accounts with information on 588 medicinal plant species. With 705 color photographs by Steven Foster, over 88% of the images are new. Over 66% of the plants in the book are native species, while 33% represent non-native, mostly European and Asian aliens.
Medicinal plants and herbs are all around us
Whether hiking along a remote Appalachian mountain trail or simply observing plants in one’s own yard, medicinal plants can be found everywhere humans live and travel.
Can we control invasive alien weeds by finding a use for them? Many homeowners attempt to eliminate weeds from their yards—dandelions, English plantain, and chickweed. Some call them weeds. We call them medicinal plants.
Some garden plants, such as English Ivy, are registered as ethical drugs in Europe, in this case for the treatment of coughs and upper respiratory tract infections.
Inspiring Conservation awareness:
A Field Guide to Medicinal Plants and Herbs provides a glimpse of the human experience with plants. Native medicinal plants from the eastern deciduous forest, including black cohosh, goldenseal, and American ginseng are among more than 150 native species that are still harvested from the wild and enter international commerce. Sustainable use of these valuable resources is paramount for future generations.
Conservation of these important genetic resources is informed by awareness of their medicinal value.
“Without knowledge there is no appreciation. Without appreciation there is no conservation.”
New Research, New Details—Reconciling tradition with science:
Uses have been thoroughly updated and revised, with more nuanced detail on historical use in pre-21st century America and elsewhere, including ethnobotanical details by specific native American groups, traditional use by American physicians and herbalists, and information on historic or modern use in Europe, China, and elsewhere.
Details on the latest scientific developments that in many cases reveal a rational scientific basis for traditional use.
Rather than use the internet or secondary references, the authors went to great lengths to scour the original references from which the information is derived, whether a 17th century renaissance herbal or the latest original scientific studies.
Since the publication of the second edition in 2000, worldwide research on medicinal plants has increased by a factor of at least 5-fold. Prior to the year 2000 a PubMED search for Echinacea in the title of a scientific paper returns 80 unique studies. A search for Echinacea in the title between 2000-2013 yields 443 studies.
Names, Distribution, Descriptions, and Flowering Times Updated:
The last decade produced a dramatic increase in the study of plant genetics leading to changes in plant taxonomy and family associations. New taxonomic designations are provided along with the synonyms of familiar scientific names from earlier works.
Plant biology and plant geography is dynamic, not static. We have revised and updated geographical distribution and occurrence details. Many non-native species have greatly increased in distribution, a disturbing but important data set.
A surprising aspect of revising data was the need to readjust the range of blooming periods. With the effects of climate change, some plants are blooming earlier (or in some cases later), which may reduce or extend flowering or fruiting, depending upon species and distribution range.
Updated Information on safety, toxicity and drug interactions:
The book contains appropriate warnings on those plants that can lead to poisoning or toxic reactions, sometimes even by handling the plant. Some plants, such as St. John’s wort are known to interact with enzyme systems that interfere with the absorption of prescription drugs, sometimes increasing or decreasing the drug’s effective dose. Important examples such as St. John’s wort are update to reflect that new research.
Cover of the 1st edition published in 1990.
First published in 1990 Steven Foster and Jim Duke’s A Field Guide to Medicinal Plants: Eastern and Central North America (Softcover: ISBN 0-395-46722-5) featured information on the identification and use of about 500 medicinal plants of eastern and central North America. It was the first modern comprehensive field guide to medicinal plants. The book included pen and inks by Roger Tory Peterson, Lee Peterson and Jim Blackfeather Rose. A 48-page color insert had nearly 200 photographs. With 366 pages it was the 40th title in The Peterson Field Guide® Series. If you have the first edition, you don’t have the third edition. Simple as that.
Cover of the 2nd edition published in 2000.
In 2000 we produced a new edition of the title, this time calling it A Field Guide to Medicinal Plants and Herbs: Eastern and Central North America, with no line drawings, illustrated with photographs. Herbs had come of age by the year 2000. In 1990, annual herb product sales were about $250 million, and by 1990 they had surpassed $3 billion largely the result of the dietary health and supplement act on 1994, which created the regulatory category of “dietary supplements” and moved herb products from health and natural food stores into the mass market. A few years earlier, the infant internet also began to play a role in marketing and distribution. If you have the second edition, we think you will enjoy the all new third edition.
Naked ladies or Surprise lilies trumpet their pink splendor in mid to late summer. These beautiful ladies are part of our foreign diversity in Eureka Springs and eastern North America generally, but alas they are just plants. Known as surprise lily, resurrection lily, magic lily or naked ladies, this pretender is laid bare not as a lily at all but a member of the Amaryllis family (Amaryllidaceae). These late blooming beauties produce unnoticed leaves in the spring, which soon die back. Out of the hot bosom of steamy August air a whorl of large showy flowers atop a leafless (naked) stalk pops from the ground.
From a 9 April 1990 article by Sereno Watson in Garden and Forest_A Journal of Horticulture, Landscape Art and Forestry.
Although not generally considered a medicinal plant, it does have bioactive components. Fayetteville, Arkansas’s KUAF Producer, Jacqueline Froelich aired a story on Surprise Lilies on 14 August 2014. You can listen to the story here. One of the alkaloids found in Lycoris squamigera is galanthamine, one of several toxic compounds in the plant. It is also famously known from the related amaryllis family member Galanthus nivalis or snow-drops a common alpine species in mountains of Europe, which is grown as an ornamental in North America, and occasionally naturalized. First isolated in the 1950s, galanthamine, formerly extracted from Galanthus nivalis, is now produced synthetically on an industrial scale. It was used in some parts of the world in the 1950s to treat nerve pain associated with polio. Today, the compound is regarded as a long-acting, selective, reversible and competitive acetylcholinesterase (AChE) inhibitor used in the systematic treatment of mild to moderate cognitive impairment in early stages of Alzheimer’s disease.
Amaryllis and it relatives cause plant name consternation. The genus Lycoris (to which our naked ladies belong) is native to eastern Asia, while Amaryllis is native to the Western Cape of South Africa. In 1753 Linnaeus named Amaryllis belladonna. Another closely related genus in the Amaryllis family is Hippeastrum from tropical America. The “amaryllis” that bloom around Christmas, available wherever bulbs are sold, are mostly hybrids of South American Hippeastrum species.
Lycoris squamigera #7547 from Curtis’s Botanical Magazine, 1897.
Our common naked lady is the Asian species Lycoris squamigera, an inelegant scientific name for an elegant plant. It superficially resembles the South African Amaryllis belladonna but differs in significant botanical characteristics as well as continent of origin. The first European illustration comes from a periodical famous for its unabashed Victorian paintings of reproductive organs (of plants)—Curtis’s Botanical Magazine volume 123, August 1, 1897. No doubt many gardeners, horticulturists and botanists have been confused by these relatives in the amaryllis family. It is no surprise that the surprise lily itself has lived under three scientific names over the decades including Hippeastrum squamigerum and Amaryllis hallii as well as the name used for more than a century—Lycoris squamigera.
I’m dreaming of a bright Christmas—sunny with temperatures approaching the low 70s. The iconic “White Christmas” is so 1940s! Forget the fact that Bing Crosby’s version of Irving Berlin’s song is the best-selling single of all time. A white Christmas is a historical song from 1941. We must look on the bright side of global warming as it relates to “climate change.” We just need to change our perspective. Speaking with my 87-yr old dad in Maine, he remarked that as a kid, he and his friends were always skating by Thanksgiving. I reminded him, that we—his kids—were also skating by Thanksgiving! During my Maine childhood a white Christmas was a given. Now, ponds and lakes barely hold ice in some Maine winters. But of course, a Maine winter is why this Maine native lives in the Ozarks.
Spring Street, Eureka Springs, Arkansas, Ice Storm 2009
Every time I experience, feel, and see beauty in nature, I am humbled and awed. I love how water changes into myriad forms of beauty in ice. I also love each and every strand of evolving, changing, adapting, mutating DNA that is The creator’s building block of creation. I don’t believe in DNA, the stuff of The creator’s evolutionary magic. I don’t have to. It exists whether I choose to believe in it or not. Recent religious thought teaches us that the Earth is flat and the Earth is the center of the Universe. And “recent” I define as what historians calls the “early modern era” beginning about 1500. As one historian friend put it, “Anything that happened after 1500 is by definition current affairs.” I don’t believe in global warming. I don’t have to believe in it. Science has blessed me with a magic wand known as a thermometer. Burn me at the stake.
The beauty of snow, sleet and freezing rain
Spring Street, Eureka Springs, Arkansas, Ice Storm 2009
Which brings me to snow, sleet and freezing rain, and what differentiates them. Snow is created when a mass of cold, freezing air is uniformly below freezing from the Earth’s surface to the upper atmosphere. Sleet
Crescent Hotel, Ice Storm, January 29, 2009
is formed when the air aloft is like a sandwich. In this case, the upper levels of the atmosphere are below freezing and when it snows, the snow passes through an atmospheric layer above freezing, causing the snow to partially melt. It then passes through a relatively shallow layer of below-freezing air at the surface, creating sleet. Freezing rain forms when rain from warm air aloft reaches below-freezing surfaces at ground level, caused by a shallow layer of cold air at the surface. Expect to see plenty of all three types of frozen precipitation this winter—courtesy of global warming.
Hoar Frost Beauty
Hoar frost on the edge of a Sycamore leaf.
And I love the beauty that all that ice in it’s myriad form creates. Take hoar frost for example. We’ve had beautiful hoar frost (also known as hoarfrost this year. But what is hoar frost? I turned to the website of the National Snow and Ice Data Center for a definition “Hoarfrost: A deposit of interlocking ice crystals (hoar crystals) formed by direct sublimation on objects, usually those of small diameter freely exposed to the air, such as tree branches, plant stems and leaf edges, wires, poles, etc., which surface is sufficiently cooled, mostly by nocturnal radiation, to cause the direct sublimation of the water vapor contained in the ambient air.”
Hoarfrost, therefore, is like dew, except when it’s cold enough outside to freeze water (that is when it’s 32°F or 0°C), and there’s moisture in the air, then hoar crystals (flat crystals that interlock together), form from the moisture in the air when it comes in contact with the edge of the object that is below freezing (or vice versa?). So if you get up early enough, especially after a clear cold night, you can experience the direct sublime beauty of hoarfrost in all its simplicity.
Hepatica leaf
Glorious Ice Ribbons
American dittany frost flower.
Another winter beauty phenomena I love is frost flowers and ice ribbons. Perhaps new to your natural history vocabulary, we can also call this phenomena “crystallofolia,” a term coined by Bob Harms of the Plant Resource Center, University of Texas, Austin, who has been investigating the phenomena we commonly call “frost flowers”— those beautiful ice formations that are produced at the base of only two native plant species in my Ozark home. Our two native plant species that exhibit this phenomenon are American dittany (Cunila origanoides) and white crownbeard or frostweed (Verbesina virginica) both of which are late-blooming wildflowers. Their frost flowers or twisted ribbons of ice appear for a few days (up to a couple of weeks) after the first hard freezes in autumn. These ephemeral sculptural beauties in ice appear at the base of the plant.
Frost flowers from
The delicate, elegant ice formations emerge laterally from the stem, just above the ground in the case of American Dittany, but from ground level to two feet up the stem in the case of white crownbeard. Why does this phenomenon only occur in a select few plant species instead of all plants? Speculation is that a combination of characteristics unique to the plant in combination with the external physical forces provides a perfect opportunity for the frost flowers to develop. The xylem, vascular tissue within plants that helps conducts water upward in the stem, is probably quite firm, with secondary rays at a right angle that is strong enough to conduct water during a frost event but its tensile strength reaches a point during the first cold frosts, that freezing water burst through the epidermis at a right angle to the stem. As it does so, it ever so slowly punches moisture into the freezing air extruding ribbons of ice. I love these beauties of nature.
Pennsylvania physician, William Darlington (1782-1863) seems to be one of the first to record observations of frost flowers in Cunila, or as he called it, Maryland Cunila. In the second edition (1837, p. 350) of his Flora Cestrica (an herborizing companion for the young botanists of Chester County, Pennsylvania) he writes: “In the beginning of winter, after a rain, very curious and fantastic ribbands [sic.] of ice may often be observed, attached to the base of the stems of this plant—produced, I presume, by the moisture from the earth rising in the dead stems by capillary attraction, and then being gradually forced out horizontally, through a slit, by the process of freezing. The same phenomenon has been noticed other plants.”
White Crown-beard frost flower.
Predicting When Hell will Freeze Over
How do you survive a cold winter? Perhaps the best way, short of a long trip to a tropical location or being condemned to a mythical inferno, is to get a comparative perspective on someone else’s cold winter. In the English-speaking world we can turn to England, which has the longest series of monthly temperature observation datasets recorded back to 1659. This dataset is known as the CET (Central England Temperature), recorded in Celsius.
Icy Christian Icon
The winter of 1683-84 is believed to be the coldest winter since records have been kept, with a “great frost” settling in by mid-December for the UK and Central Europe. By January of 1684, the Thames River was frozen all the way up to London Bridge. The Thames itself remained frozen for over two months, with ice measured to a depth of 11 inches. In southwest England, in Somerset, it is said that the ground froze to a depth of four feet. Southwest England, has a relatively mild climate, tempered by the Gulf Stream in the winter months, and Azores high pressure systems in the summer. The winter of 1684 had thee coldest CET at –1.2 deg. C. This period of cold winters lasted for several centuries. From 1408-1814, the Thames froze over 24 times; sometimes the ice was deep enough to support “frost fairs” on the Thames (the last one in 1814).
This is all within a period known as “the Little Ice Age”, a phrase first used in the scientific literature until 1939. It is loosely defined as a period from about 1350-1850, with three particularly cold periods around 1650, 1770 and 1850. Attributed causes include low cycles of solar radiation, increased volcanic activity and variables in ocean circulation.
Goji berry on ice
Fewer sun spots may cause cooling. The years 1645-1715 represent a period of weak solar activity (fewer sun spots) known as the Maunder Minimum period (in which only one-thousandth of “average” expected sun spots occurred). This solar lull is theorized to have trigged regional cooling in the Northern Hemisphere. Since 2008 we have been in a period of “solar maximum” yet only half of the sunspot activity expected has occurred. This has led some scientists to speculate that we could be heading toward a period of “cooler “solar activity within the next 40 years. Add that into the global-warming equation, and you still get climate change
Diospyros virginiana, persimmon, was widely used as food and medicine by native groups, who made a paste of the ripe fruits, baked it into loaves about the thickness of the finger. Mixed with corn meal, it made an excellent bread. Colonial physicians used the dried ripe fruit, the powder of the unripe fruit, the powdered inner bark or the bark of the root taken in wine for treatment of dysentery, diarrhea, fevers, hemorrhoids and other conditions. Used for making beer, spirits and wine.
Fall colors are popping, and piles of pumpkins remind us that cold weather is soon upon us. I love the autumn colors for how they differentiate one tree from another. A few native trees show-off their fruits this time of year like orange-brown persimmons dangling like holiday ornaments. Persimmons are delicious if they are ripe, which begs the question, which came first, the season’s first frost or the first ripe persimmon? Conventional wisdom is that persimmons ripen once they are hit by a frost. This year, we have yet to have a frost, but I’ve been plucking ripe persimmons for two weeks. I enjoy their sweet flavor and mealy texture, projecting the seeds with a purse of the lips like one ejects watermelon seeds. Given the timing, I can only conclude that the first frost and the ripening of persimmons occur at about the same time each year no matter what the weather.
Experience teaches any wild food enthusiast that you bite into an unripe persimmon only once. The high astringency sucks every bit of moisture from one’s mouth! This year as I’ve tested persimmons for ripeness with a gentle squeeze to determine their softness, my curiosity leads me to inspect each persimmon. I notice s that those persimmons that are ripe show signs of interest by small creatures. Maybe it’s a small hole or the remnants of a web on the outside, or some other little evidence of a bug. My theory is that when a bug bites a persimmon, they inject or induce some enzymatic reaction that hastens the fruit’s ripening; a twist of coevolution.
As I ponder information that I’ve collected on persimmons, all roads lead back to the time of George Washington’s presidency. In 1792, a physician and chemist, James Woodhouse (1770-1809) completed his medical degree at the University of Pennsylvania, with publication of “An Inaugural Dissertation, on the Chemical and Medical Properties of the Persimmon Tree, and the Analysis of Astringent Vegetables.”
The persimmon tree, called piakimine, we learn from early explorers, were widely used as food and medicine by native groups, who made a paste of the ripe fruits, baked it into flat cakes about the thickness of the finger. Mixed with flour from other food sources, it made an excellent bread. Colonial physicians used the dried ripe fruit, the powder of the unripe fruit, the powdered inner bark or the bark of the root taken in wine for treatment of dysentery. Woodhouse records a treatment for hemorrhoids “as useful as any, in the cure of the disease.” It is a mixture of the juice of unripe persimmons with hog’s lard, “sugar of lead” [lead acetate which actually has a sweet taste] and opium.
The potential of the unripe juice of persimmons in tanning leathers excited Thomas Jefferson. Woodhouse suggested that three hundred persimmon trees, producing an average of four bushels of fruits could produce six pounds of gum resin per tree which would be far superior to oak bark for tanning. It would require less labor, less capital and be far cleaner [for the environment] than the standard tannery of the day which relied upon oak bark. For a time, North Carolina commercially cultivated persimmons. In the South, when forests were cleared, persimmon trees were preserved, which is perhaps why we have an abundance of persimmon trees around old Ozark farmsteads today.
Ripe fruits can be collected and squeezed through a strainer to remove the seeds and as much of the skin as possible, then put away in the freezer until needed. A wide variety of products can be made from the dried, frozen or fresh fruits. This is best reflected in the pages of Billy Joe Tatum’s Wild Foods Field Guide and Cookbook (Workman Press, 1976.) Billy Joe transformed wild edibles from the realm of survival foods to haute cuisine. In her popular book she includes recipes for Persimmon breads, cookies (with chocolate chips), Persimmon and corn meal muffins, custard, fruit cake, Indian-style pudding, jam, jelly, pie, pinwheels, sherbet and even Persimmon soufflé.
During Civil War years rebel soldiers used Persimmon seeds as a coffee substitute. In attempts to find substitute products unavailable because of Union blockades on southern ports, the southern fields and forests became creative sources of replacement commodities. Recipes were developed for Persimmon syrups, vinegar, coffee, and beer.
In D.J. Browne’s Sylva Americana (1832) the author relates:
“The fruit is sometimes pounded with bran, and formed into cakes which are dried in an oven, and kept to make beer, for which purpose they are dissolved in warm water with the addition of hops and leaven. It was long since found that brandy might be made from this fruit, by distilling the water, previously fermented, in which they have been bruised. This liquor is said to become good as it acquires age.”
Persimmon is a member of the Ebony Family (Ebenaceae). The genus Diospyros, the largest in the family, has 500 or more species widely distributed in Asia, Africa, the Mediterranean Region, South and North America. Though primarily a genus of tropical regions with just a few species enduring colder climates, the fossil remains of ancient Diospyros species are recorded from the Miocene deposits of Alaska and Greenland, and the Cretaceous formations of Nebraska.
Diospyros virginiana – Persimmon, Possumwood, Possum Apple, Date Plum, or Virginia Date Plum as it is variously known, is the species found in eastern North America. A second North American species Diospyros texana occurs in river valleys of southwestern Texas, extending into Mexico.
Diospyros kaki and D. lotus, two east Asian species, have been cultivated for centuries in China as a fruit crop. Many new cultivated sweet and seedless varieties have been developed over the years. The Asian fruit-producing species are sometimes grown in warmer regions of the U.S. as a minor cash crop. It is interesting to note that the temperate North American Diospyros virginiana is much more closely related to the East Asian D. lotus (occurring from the northwestern Himalayas through eastern China to Japan), than it is to South American relatives. The leaves of the two species are strikingly similar. Some botanists have asserted that unlabeled specimens of the two species could be laid side-by-side, and an expert would be hard-put to determine which was which.
The generic name Diospyros means “fruit of Zeus”, apparently referring to the life-giving properties of the fruits. The specific epithet “virginiana” obviously refers to the region from which it was first collected.
What will the future hold for Persimmons? The fruits have an endless possibility for variety and development of new products. A curious natural product scientist might follow the lead of studying the use of Persimmon seeds for kidney stones. Wood workers might find novel uses for the tough, tight-grained material. And maybe one or two of you will stop at a fruit-laden Persimmon tree on your way to the supermarket and collect a few pounds of a divine native fruit.
Chaste Tree (Vitex agnus-castus) has been used for gynecological conditions since the days of Hippocrates (2500 years ago). With a rich traditional of use, modern research supports historical wisdom, and has made chaste tree fruit preparations a phytomedicine of choice by European gynecologists for treatment of various menstrual disorders, PMS, and other conditions.
Origins and Botany
The genus Vitex until recently has been associated for centuries with the verbena family (Verbenaceae), and includes about 250 species, primarily tropical shrubs and trees. Only a few Vitex species occur in temperate regions. Vitex agnus-castus L., commonly known as chaste tree, is the sole species to occur in Europe. Native to West Asia and southwestern Europe, the shrub was introduced throughout Europe at an early date. It was known in English gardens as early a 1570, and now occurs throughout the European continent.
Chaste tree is a shrub growing from nine to seventeen feet tall, though specimens twenty-five feet high, with trunks eight inches in diameter, have been recorded. It has palmate leaves, usually with five to nine (rarely three) leaflets, white hairy beneath, with densely hairy, resinous leaf stalks. The flowers are in a pyramidal-shaped showy cluster, with seven inch spikes, sporting tiny blue to lilac blooms. Chaste tree has a long blooming period, as early as April in the deep South, lasting into October in more northerly areas in the United States. Typically it blooms from June through August. The small round fruits (seeds) have a pungent scent and flavor. Introduced to American gardens by European immigrants in the early nineteenth, the shrub has become naturalized in much of the Southeastern United States, occurring in Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas, southeast Oklahoma, north to Maryland.
The genus name Vitex derives from an ancient designation, vei, meaning to “wind, bend or twine,” referring to the once common use of the tough, flexible branches in constructing woven (wattle) fences. Pliny was the first to apply the name Vitex to the plant, perhaps derived from the Latin “vitilium” (wicker-work). The species name “agnus-castus” derives from a historical mis-interpretation of the original Greek name, “ágnos,” first applied by Dioscorides, and translated as “holy, pure or chaste,” Castus derives from the Latin castitas, meaning chastity. Agnus the Latin for lamb, at some point in history, replaced the original Greek “agnos” in reference to this plant (Böhnert and Hahn 1990).
History
Chaste tree has been used for the treatment of menstrual difficulties for at least 2,500 years. The Greek physician Hippocrates (460-377 B.C.) wrote, “If blood flows from the womb, let the woman drink dark wine in which the leaves of the chaste tree have been steeped. A draft of chaste leaves in wine also serves to expel a chorion held fast in the womb” (as quoted by Bleier 1959). Use for gynecological conditions are also noted in the works of Pliny and Dioscorides (1st century A. D.), as well as Theophrastus (3rd century A.D.). “The trees furnish medicines that promote urine and menstruation,” wrote Pliny, “They encourage abundant rich milk. . .” (Jones 1966).
Dioscorides, quoted from Goodyer’s 1655 English translation, recognizes effects on females, “It doth brings downe the milke, and expells ye menstrua, being drank to ye quantity of a dragme in wine” (Gunther 1934). These recommendations survive to the time of Gerarde, “The decoction of the herbe and seed is good against pain and inflammations about the matrix, if women be caused to sit and bathe their privy parts therein; the seed being drunke with Pennyroiall bringeth downe the menses, as it doth also both in a fume and in a pessary. . .” (Gerarde 1633).
Chasteberry
The tree was associated with ancient Greek festivals. In the Thesmophoria, a festival held in honor of Demeter, the Greek goddess of agriculture, fertility and marriage, women (who remained “chaste” during the festival), used the blossoms for adornment, while bows of twigs and leaves, were strewn around Demeter’s temple during the festival (Böhnert and Hahn 1990). Pliny wrote, “the Athenian matrons preserving their chastity at the Thesmophoria, strew their beds with its leaves.” (Jones 1966). In Rome, vestal virgins carried twigs of chaste tree as a symbol of chastity. According to Greek mythology, Hera, sister and wife of Zeus, regarded as protectress of marriage, was born under a chaste tree. Ancient traditions associating the shrub with chastity were adopted in Christian ritual. Novitiates entering a monastery walked on a path strewn with the blossoms of the tree, a ritual that continues to the present day in some regions of Italy (Böhnert and Hahn 1990).
The shrub’s ancient association with chastity led to later use of the fruits as an anaphrodisiac, quieting the desires of the flesh, especially of celibate clergy. “These seeds have been celebrated as antiaphrodisiacs, and were formerly much used by monks for allaying the venereal appetite; but experience does not warrant their having any such virtues,” wrote Andrew Duncan in the 1789 edition of the Edinburgh Dispensatory.
Robert John Thorton (1814), put it more eloquently, “As there are provocatives to procreations, as shell-fish, eggs, and roots of orchises made into salep for the male, and spare dict and use of steel for the female, so it is possible the chaste tree may have a contrary effect; and hence the seeds have been called Piper monachorum (Monk’s pepper), who flew to them when they found the spirit to be willing, but the flesh weak.”
Many of the common names of the shrub refer to this use of the plant, including, Abraham’s Balm, Chaste Lamb-Tree, Safe Tree, Monk’s Pepper-Tree. It has also been called Indian-Spice, and Wild-Pepper, referring to the use of the fruits as a pepper substitute. The small round fruits (seeds) have a pungent scent and flavor reminiscent of black pepper. The fragrant leaves have also been used as a substitute for hops in brewing beer.
Through the eighteenth and nineteenth century, the fruits were little used by European medical practitioners. In the late nineteenth century, Felter and Lloyd (1898) suggested use of a tincture of the fresh berries to Eclectic medical practitioners to increase milk secretions and useful as an agent in menstrual disorders. In small doses, it was said to be useful in the treatment of impotence, and perhaps useful for nervousness or mild dementia.
Early Modern Research (1938-1960)
Madaus (1938) was the first to initiate use of chaste tree in the twentieth century. Recognizing the long-recognized value of the plant in gynecological disorders, he designed a series of animal experiment to determine which part of the plant had the greatest biological activity. Madaus found that extracts of the leaves, fruits, and bark retarded estrus (heat) in female rats, without evidence of adverse effects on reproductive performance. The fruits had the greatest activity.
Chasteberry
During the Second World War, medical practitioners in Germany recognized a stress-induced lactation repression in women, prompting a search for effective galactogogues (milk stimulating substances). Clinical confirmation of the efficacy of chaste tree fruit preparations in stimulating lactation were published in three separate papers by Janke, Hofmeir and Noack and Noack in 1941, 1942 and 1943 respectively (as reviewed by Böhnert and Hahn 1990). Later animal studies in the late 1950s further confirmed an experimental lactation-stimulating action. In 1954, Mohr reported on a study of 1000 maternity patients, comparing vitamin B1 and a chaste tree fruit preparation in stimulating lactation to a placebo. The author concluded that the chaste tree fruit preparation resulted in more successful lactation than vitamin B1 or the control group. Increased lactation has been attributed to an increase in prolactin secretion, increased progesterone synthesis, reducing estrogen secretions (which tend to inhibit milk production).
Active constituents and Actions
Results of these early studies led investigators to postulate that either the plant contained a component that replaced hormones produced by the body, or plant extracts, acting through the pituitary, might regulate hormone production (Haller 1961). Various studies, reviewed by Böhnert and Hahn (1990), indicate that a tincture of the seeds produces an effect on the hypothalamus-pituitary system, showing a gonadotropic function and causing an increased release of lutenizing homone with consecutive increase of progesterone level. Prolactin secretion is inhibited because of a dopaminergic action. In other words it acts on the pituitary gland to regulate the production of and induce normalization of the ovarian hormones, changing the ratio of estrogens and gestagens in favor of gestagens. The timing of the release of pituitary hormones, regulate menstruation, fertility, and other processes. Hence, an agent that will produce a balance of hormones can help to regulate these processes.
The biological activity of chaste tree cannot be attributed to a single chemical component. The fruits contain flavonoids including the major flavonoid casticin, as well as orientin and isovitexin (Belic et al., 1958, 1961, 1962). Other flavonoids include 3,6,7,4’-tetramethyl ether of 6-hydroxykaempferol, and quercetagetin (Wollenweber and Mann 1982). The dried fruits also contain an essential oil (up to 1.22%), as well as iridoid glycosides including aucubin, eurostoside and agnuside among others (Görler et al., 1985, Gomma et al. 1978). A recent study detected the probable presence of delta-3-ketosteroids in flower extracts include progesterone, 17-a-hydroxyprogesterone, testosterone, and epitestosterone; leaf extracts yield andostenedione. However, the reported results of this study were ambiguous (Saden-Krehula, et al. 1990). The vast majority of chemical, pharmacological and clinical studies have involved a proprietary extract, Agnolyt®, (capsules and liquid) manufactured by Madaus AG, Cologne, Germany.
Chasteberry, like the rest of the 250 species of Vitex, long-placed in the verbena family (Verbenaceae) now in a genetic surprise twist are placed in the mint family (Lamiaceae).
Modern Clinical Use
An imbalance of estrogen and progesterone has also been associated with premenstrual syndrome (PMS). Symptoms appear seven to ten days before the beginning of menstruation, and cease once the cycle begins. Physical symptoms include painful breasts, abdominal discomfort and fullness, flatulence, edema (especially of the lower extremities, as well as the hands and the face), and headache. Mental symptoms may include mood swings, nervous irritability, depression, restlessness, and aggressiveness. It is estimated that between 5 and 30% of women may be affected by PMS. Therapeutic choices by health care professionals are based on severity of symptoms. In severe cases, the treatment of choice is likely to be steroidal hormones. In Europe, however, gynecologists have another choice, preparations made from the fruits of the chaste tree (Feldmann).
A clinical survey of German gynecologists published in 1992 evaluated the effect of a chaste-tree preparation (Agnolyt®) on 1542 women diagnosed with PMS. Treatment of 40 drops daily lasted an average of 166 days. Both physicians and patient assessed efficacy, with 90 percent reporting relief of symptoms, after an average treatment duration of 25.3 days. Two percent reported side effects, mostly gastrointestinal in nature (Dittmar et al 1992, Brown 1994).
In one clinical drug monitoring study of the efficacy and safety of long-term treatment with a chaste tree fruit tincture, 1571 women with menstrual disorders including corpus-luteum insufficiency and PMS were followed for a period of 7 days to six years (average 147.6 days). The preparations was 1:5 tincture, with a 58% alcohol content. The dose was 40 drops once a day taken on an empty stomach in the morning with water. In 90 percent of patients, the treatment eliminated or alleviated symptoms of PMS. Results for 465 patients were rated very good, 714 good, 220 satisfactory, 110 unsatisfactory, and in 62 cases no data was available. Adverse reactions were reported for 30 patients (1.9 percent), including 12 cases of nausea, malaise, gastric symptoms and diarrhea, and a single allergic reaction (Feldmann, et al., 1990).
Coeugniet, et al (1986), in a three month trial with 36 patients with PMS reported positive results in physical and psychological symptoms. A dose of 40 drops a day, taken over a three month period, produced a reduction in headaches, breast tenderness and pressure, bloating, and fatigue. Improvement in anxiety, mood swings, and other psychological symptoms were also reported. Given the positive results of experimental studies in the 1940s and 50s coupled with clinical experience, has lead to the use of chaste tree extracts in European phytotherapy in several major areas including: management of menstrual disorders, PMS, treatment of infertility produced by mild corpus luteum insufficiency, and hot flashes at the initial stages of menopause, among other conditions.
In Europe, the use of phytomedicines in the treatment of menstrual disturbances is often preferred over conventional treatment, if no contraceptives are indicated. Steroidal hormones are often considered unnecessary, and individual treatment initiated once differentiation has been made between cyclic and acyclic bleeding difficulties (Loch 1989). A benefit of chaste tree treatment is the relative lack of side effects compared with treatment with steroidal hormones. Another benefit is that the price of chaste tree preparation therapy is far below that of conventional treatment methods. The 1992 German Commission E monograph (now irrelevant as a regulatory document) on chaste tree fruits allowed use of preparations for menstrual disorders due to rhythmic disorders of menstruation, mastodynia (pressure and swelling in the breasts), and premenstrual syndrome. Preparations include alcoholic extracts of the pulverized fruits (tincture) formulated to an average daily dose equivalent to 30-40 mg of the seeds. No contraindications were listed. While no interactions with other drugs are reported, animal experiments indicate the possibility of interference with dopamine-receptor antagonists. Side effects noted include too early menstruation following delivery (resulting from activation of the pituitary), as well as rare instances of itching and rashes. Chaste tree preparations are contraindicated during pregnancy (Monograph Agni casti fructus).
In a review on the relationship between phytotherapy and orthodox medicine, Schilcher (1994) reports that an important reason for the acceptance of phytotherapy by many German physicians is the existence of the scientifically supported Commission E monographs (as cited above). He also notes that acceptance of phytotherapy rests with the fact that in Germany, their use is consider a component of orthodox medicine and not an alternative approach. In Germany chaste tree fruit preparations are considered a safe, effective, and low-priced tool available to, accepted by, and widely used by gynecologists.
Summary
Chaste tree, recognized for nearly 2,500 years in the treatment of gynecological conditions, has been widely used in European phytotherapy for over fifty years. The majority of clinical reports in that period have been non-controlled studies by gynecologists in clinical practice, who report positive results. Chaste tree preparations are frequently used in the safe and effective treatment of PMS, heavy periods, too frequent periods, acyclic bleeding, infertility, suppressed menses, and other conditions, many of which are linked to corpus luteum insufficiency. Vitex is an excellent example of a phytomedicine which serves as a low-priced tool in orthodox European gynecological practice, rather than an “alternative” treatment.
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Often when I’m out on a group hike, we come across plants that some are surprised to see in Arkansas. One of those plants is yucca. In fact, that are five species of Yucca recorded from Arkansas, including two or three from Carroll County, depending upon botanical whim. Botanists are so adept at changing plant names, that if they were put in charge of naming planets, we would surely wake-up one morning to discover that we no longer live on a planet called Earth. Telling Arkansas’s five yucca species apart from one another takes a good deal of chin rubbing.
Yucca elata
Fortunately for lay-folk consumers of botanical knowledge, the common name yucca is the same as the genus name—Yucca. One species of Yucca here in Carroll County has a name that’s easy to remember —Yucca arkansana which is kin to Yucca louisianensis due to inbreeding or some other evolutionary exchange of genes in the pre-human past. In 2014, the late Dr. George P. Johnson, a botanist at Arkansas Tech in Russellville found Yucca freemanii in Miller County. Besides these three native species, Yucca filamentosa and Yucca flaccida occur here but are not native to Arkansas; they are naturalized. In other words, they were planted at some point and now grow and reproduce without the help of humans.
Mojave Yucca
In North America (north of Mexico) there are twenty-eight species of Yucca. Yuccas have been used for thousands of years for food, beverages, detergents, medicines, construction material, and especially as a fiber plant. During the First World War, 80 million pounds of yucca fiber were used to make course bags. The U.S. Navy used a special heavy paper made from yucca fiber during material shortages of the Second World War. Over the centuries, among indigenous groups of the American Southwest, yuccas were the foremost wild plants used for material necessities.
One National Park in California is named after a yucca (Yucca brevifolia) the 792,683-acre, Joshua Tree National Park. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt decreed it a National Monument in 1933. In that same year, a cousin of Roosevelt’s, Susan Delano McKelvey, published a paper on yuccas in the Journal of the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University where she worked as a research associate and valued patron. So which came first, the President’s decree or his cousin’s interest in Joshua tree and other yuccas? Later, she wrote the definitive two volume work Yuccas of the Southwestern United States. My vote goes to Roosevelt’s cousin.
The autumn of 1818 was a difficult period for families in the small Indiana settlement of Little Pigeon Creek. Dennis Friend Hanks, a 19-year old, lived with his maternal grandparents, Thomas and Elizabeth Sparrows who died that fall from the milk sickness. The Sparrows lived on the homestead of their young niece whom they had raised, Nancy Hanks Lincoln along with her husband Thomas, and their children 11-year-old, Sarah, and 9-year-old Abraham. On October 5, 1818, Abraham Lincoln’s mother, Nancy Hanks Lincoln, also died from the “milk sickness” a disease that had only been described in 1810 by Daniel Drake as a brief notice of a “new disease” in Cincinnati. The “milk sickness” was a perplexing fatal disease that took the lives of thousands in the Western frontier in the nineteenth century. It often affected entire families and destroyed communities. The only way to contract the disease was by drinking milk or eating butter. The cause of the disease confounded science into the 1920s.
Attempting to secure milk for his party camped north of St. Louis in 1827, T. L. M’Kenny, Chief of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, was told by a settler that after early spring, people stopped using milk. M’Kenny was among the first to speculate that the milk must be tainted from the cows eating a poisonous weed. By the late nineteenth century one plant, a wildflower, with white, button-like flowerheads less than a 1/2-inch across emerged as a suspect—White Snakeroot. Blooming in late summer and early fall, this native weedy wildflower once called Eupatorium rugosum is now known as Ageratina altissima.
In 1908 a USDA researcher, A. C. Crawford authored a U.S.D.A Bulletin “The supposed relationship of white snakeroot to milksickness or trembles.” He had proven that the dried plant produced no symptoms of milk sickness. Science is not always as it seems. He missed an important clue. Milk sickness only occurred during the growing season before the first frost of autumn. He only tested dried plant material and only proved that the dried plant was inert.
In 1926, another USDA chemist, James F. Couch, showed that fresh—not dried—White Snakeroot caused milk sickness. The following year he isolated the chemical complex—tremetol—as the toxic component. The mystery of milk sickness which claimed Abraham Lincoln’s mother and countless thousands of other settlers had finally been solved.
A version of this story was published in my weekly “Eureka Nature” column in the October 17, 2013 edition of the Eureka Springs Independent Newspaper. I visited friends in Missouri on October 20th. They homestead a rich 80-acre Ozark farm in Douglas County, Missouri. They have goats. One died in the spring of 2013 of what a vet determined was “probably a parasitic infection.” The mother of four children suffered neurological symptoms. The family consumed a gallon of goat’s milk per day. Her husband stopped drinking goat’s milk that spring. It made him feel ill, leading him to the conclusion that he may have an allergy to goat’s milk. It made him nauseous. Once he stopped drinking goat’s milk, his health problems disappeared. The family’s and their livestocks’ collective symptoms, along with the presence of white snakeroot around their farm made me wonder—is milk sickness still with us, confined to small homesteads of back-to-the-landers, with symptoms of both livestock and humans completely unrecognized in modern medicine and thus unreported?