A little about St.John's Wort
St. John's Wort is flowering like crazy in the Adelaide Hills at the moment. Yesterday, I went harvesting in the heat and I thought I'd write a little about it for you.
I've used Hypericum perforatum for a few years now for things related to our nerves. The petals with their jagged edges, looking almost frayed and those stamen pointing all over the place remind me of nervous conditions frazzled nerves.I like to think of the stamn as reminding me of the nerves in our fingers and toes. This is apt becausr Hypericum is particularly suited to painful injuries in thse nerve-rich areas.
The bright uplifting yellow of the flower is what we need when our nerves are frayed and I found yesterday when I was out harvesting some, that I could easily differentiate it from the other yellows of the many plants from the Daisy family in flower at the moment.
St. John's Wort is a flower of the Sun. Most herbs are harvested early in the day, before the sun hits them with its full strength but St. John’s Wort likes to be picked on a warm sunny afternoon. Yesterday really fit the bill!
It's an interesting plant in that the oil squeezed from the yellow flowers is a dark red. In my first year of harvesting, my hands looked like a scene from Macbeth! I had crushed so many petals with my clumsy technique. This year though, a mild reddening of index finger and thumb was all, as I'd learned how to be a bit more delicate. The bloody red pic is a staged one to show how much oil can come from one flower.
Have you used St.John's Wort before? Do you use it now? Please share your personal experiences.
Some of you may have seen that I've been writing a series of posts about making herbal remedies at home. I want to share what I know of this topic so that, as the world gets crazier, folks will have other avenues of medical care, namely those of themselves and their community. If you look back over this blog, you can see heaps of info on the topic, plus loads and loads of posts on herbs and using Australian bushfoods from a white perspective. If you haven't been around on in the @hivegarden and @naturalmedicine communities for long, you may be interested in looking back. There's w-a-a-a-a-y too much there for me to repost and the Hive system doesn't let you vote on old posts so, if you're happy with what you find, I believe that there is now a tip option...
St. John's Wort is truly a remarkable herb with its various therapeutic properties. Thanks for shedding light on its history, traditional uses, and the precautions to consider.
Nature's pharmacy is vast and fascinating!
Thanks, a pleasure to share.
St. John's Wort is such an interesting herb that has somehow alluded me all these years. Every year I go visit my mom in the North, she is also an herbalist so we have a tradition of planting a section of a new herb in her garden each visit. Three years ago we found three St. John's Wort plants at a unique nursery and planted them together in a sunny spot. Oddly it took three years for them to finally bloom! During the summer solstice last year I visited and we picked the flowering tops for making an infused oil but, I had to go before it was done infusing. So, next time I will get to try this medicine, and I am really looking forward to it!
Picking the tops at the Sunmer Solstice sounds like the perfect way to do it!
St. John's Wort oil is well-known in France to cure burning. Fortunately, I never had to test it for that!
It is a wonderful healer. I too am lucky that I've not had to try it out on myself too often 😁
It's so cool that it has a red oil! You would think that would show up in the flower.
It's one of the great things about the plant 🪴
last year in the summer i found St. John's wort and made a dmso tincture from it. at the moment i take 2 drops of it daily in the morning and wait 1 hour until i eat something.
do you know more about it? and how do you use it?
I've never tried it with dmso. It's so hard to get here legally.
I've just updated the page about St. John's Wort on our website with better everything
https://ligayagarden.online/healing-herbs/st-johns-wort-hypericum-perforatum/
i didn't even know dmso was illegal in some countries.
thanks for your link and i will check it out ! :)
Lots of things in Oz are illegal (unless you're in the police or a politician)
I just checked again. It's not illegal any more but the assumption for the police is that if you have it, you're taking other drugs...and all the hassles that entails