P is for Purple Coneflower is part of the Alphabet Project, begun by edible office/Zoey Kroll. I’ve picked her challenge up and am embarking on the Alphabet Garden: the Herbal Set an A-Z compendium of medicinal herbs largely growing in the san francisco/ channel watershed/ salmon run nation (with occasional shots from maine! because it calls to me, and when it calls, i return). We’re tincturing, harvesting, planting, mapping and eating our way through the alphabet, leading up to 350.org‘s 10-10-10 global day of action. see also the larger alphabet garden set.
see also: alphabet remedies
Echinacea has been talked about so much. Do we really have anything more to say about it? You might say yes until you see it bloom in the garden, tall and strong, with gorgeous color when everything else seems to have gone by. Is this part of its signature… that it has a vibrance and longevity that exceeds…. It might be, considering its reputation for the immune system.
The echinacea purpurea that grew in the Montville, Maine gardens I lived in last year was as tall as me.
2009 was a great year for purple coneflower in Maine. Perhaps because of all the rain at the end of the spring and beginning of the summer… I harvested the aerial parts as well as the roots. I tinctured some fresh in vodka, dried some for tea, and added some aerial parts to vinegar for a hyssop-thyme-echinacea vinegar.
Recently I added purple coneflower to a skin-tea.
Echinacea… anti-microbrial, anti-viral, anti-inflammatory, anti-bacterial…. very restorative for our inner ecology, for the immune system (although I have heard that echinacea is not as effective for folks with O-type blood).
The freshly dried echinacea I had last year had a sweetish taste. I never tasted this flavor from bulk echinacea before. The flavor and the echinacea sensation stays in the mouth for a long time afterwards. There is a sensation to it. Apparently echinacea has a long history of use for treatment of pain, esp. from open wounds. I’m not surprised. I think this sensation in the mouth i’m talking about is the same property that would help with pain.
Maybe echinacea helps with the resistance to pain. if so, then this would connect to its abilities with immunity as well. immunity, health, wholing — these are strengthened and developed by easing resistance to the lessons of pain.
This is a version of a post I originally wrote last year.
