Long use for respiratory problems
Coltsfoot (Tussilago farfara or Coughwort) is a herbaceous perennial of the Compositae family, growing up to 30cm in thin, indifferent soils in Europe. The plant has a creeping rhizome and stems that hold pale yellow flowers, which appear before the leaves are fully formed. The mature leaf looks like the imprint of a young horse and has white, downy hairs on the underside. The flowers, which smell of liquorice, are followed by seed-heads that have a crown of fine, silky hairs that are very popular with finches for nest building.
The plant’s generic name, Tussilago, is from the Latin for cough dispeller, and the common name from a mediaeval Latin translation of foal’s foot.
Coltsfoot has a long use as a medicinal cure for respiratory ailments, Dioscorides and Galenus recommended it for bronchitis and asthma. Pliny observed that country folk smoke the dried leaves through hollow canes while sipping wine in an endeavour to cure chest infections.
Culpeper suggests ‘dry leaves are best for those who have their rheums and distillations upon their lungs… and it helpeth St. Anthony’s fire (erysipelas) and is singular good to take away wheals.’ The flowers were once the symbol of French apothecaries.
The herb contains flavanoids, mucilage and pyrrolizidine alkaloids; these have the effect of being anti-catarrhal, expectorant, demulcent, diuretic, antispasmodic, anti-inflammatory, antitussive and an immune stimulant. It also contains vitamin C and the mineral zinc. Traditionally used to treat bronchial infections, it is recommended by some herbalists to treat whooping cough, laryngitis, dry irritating cough such as that brought on by smoking, bronchial asthma, tuberculosis of the lung, diarrhoea and with limited success in cases of silicosis and pneumoconiosis. Extracts taken from coltsfoot were common in Victorian patent cough mixtures and decoctions from the leaf and root were applied as poultices to slow-healing, ulcerated wounds. The leaves of the plant have been a common ingredient of herbal smoking mixtures and the silky seed heads used by poor Scots to stuff mattresses and pillows. Coltsfoot was used to make a pleasant country wine.
Recently some European drug licencing authorities have raised a doubt about the use of coltsfoot in herbal medicine, claiming that the alkaloids may be responsible for liver damage, however, a number of herbalists suggest that the alkaloid is dispersed when exposed to heat.
Next week Burning Bush
