HELPFUL HERBS & PLANTS WITH A PURPOSE – RABBIT TOBACCO

papa-pepper (80)in #nature • 7 years ago

Rabbit Tobacco? Yes indeed, and it’s amazing!

I was recently hanging out in a field with a friend, the same guy who taught me about Sassafras, when he grabbed a plant near our feet. He stripped the dried, curly, silver leaves from the stem and crushed them a little in his fist before holding it out for me to smell.

Maple syrup covered pancakes!

That was the scent of it. He quickly pointed around and I noticed a lot more of this peculiar, delicious-smelling plant growing naturally all around us. The conversation that took place afterwards was information filled and interesting.

Smoking it to help with asthma? A healing tea? Cancer-curing properties? From the strange-sounding to the “too good to be true” sounding, this man gave me a lot to think about and a lot to research too! The common name of this plant is Rabbit Tobacco (Pseudognaphalium obtusifolium), and soon I was seeing it everywhere.

Could such a common, and commonly overlooked, plant really have such incredible health benefits? Could it really be a free plant with incredible medicinal properties that is available all over the wild for our use, if we desire to? Not being quite sure, I first went out to the wild to observe and consider.

HARVESTING

Next to a nearby pond, a scattered patch was growing. Apparently, you want the plant to be dried and the leaves crisp, curled, and silver-looking before you harvest it. Since it was late-February, that’s how the Rabbit Tobacco plants that we found looked. Soon, a new year’s supply of all sorts of wild plants will be springing up and any dried plants left over from last year will return to the soil and decompose, so my son and I took advantage of the situation.

Within minutes, we had successfully harvested a thick bouquet of the dried Rabbit Tobacco. When we returned home, I striped the leaves from the stem as my friend had and stuffed a pint jar full of them. At this point, I had my own supply, but I still hadn’t done any research.

RESEARCH

Once I jumped online to learn more and attempt to confirm the claims made by my friend, I soon concluded that he had not made Rabbit Tobacco sound too good to be true, he hadn’t even told me the half of it. On site after site a large variety of properties and uses were shared time and time again.

At least for centuries, man has been aware of the health benefits of Rabbit Tobacco, and probably longer. Here in North America, many of the native tribes used this plant frequently in their lives for a variety of ailments long before the advent of modern medicine. One example of this comes from the Cherokee.

The Cherokee use it in a compound for muscle cramps, local pains, and twitching,[3]and apply an infusion of it over scratches made over muscle cramp pain.[4] It is also used internally with Carolina Vetch for rheumatism.[5] A decoction is taken for colds, and the plant is also made into cough syrup.[6] It is used in a sweat bath to treat various diseases, made into a warm liquid blown down throat for clogged throat (diphtheria), chewed for a sore mouth, smoked for asthma, and chewed for a sore throat.

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In this modern times of FDA regulations and chemical pharmaceuticals pushed by big pharma and the medical community, could there really be any actual scientific explanation for the ancient claims of those who roamed this world before us? Here is just a fraction of what I found when researching that.

The primary healing chemicals found in Rabbit Tobacco are called Tepenes and have demonstrated an ability to positively affect cancer (cytotoxic) and viral infections (viricides) such as the common cold and influenza. There are also chemicals known as sterols and saponins which demonstrate healing effects upon the human body.

These chemicals are soluble in water as well as alcohol; the mode of action differing upon which manner you choose to extract the medicinal properties. Either way, it does not take a lot to positively impact health. A spoonful of the dried leaves in an infusion of hot water reduces the length of any viral infection while, at the same time, soothing the irritating cough and expelling mucous built up in the lungs.

Dr. James A. Duke in his U.S. Department of Agriculture database of edible and medicinal plants lists members of this family being: anti-hepatomic, anti-mutagenic, anti-tumor (lung), anti-tumor (ovary) and immunomodulator. In the Peterson Guide to Medicinal Plants Eastern/Central edition, James Duke and Stephen Foster provide uses more commonly understood; sore throats, pneumonia, colds, fevers and diarrhea. They also state that the fresh juice is an aphrodisiac although other sources actually list it as having the opposite effect upon the libido.

On the terrific website, Plants for a Future, it is listed as a diaphoretic, diuretic, expectorant and astringent. This site also lists it as an anaphrodisiac. However you choose to use this plant, it is powerful and works for a wide range of ailments.

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This is just some of what one source shared about Rabbit Tobacco. I won’t bother repeating it, but some amazing properties do seem to exist in it, and apparently, it is pretty potent. I haven’t tried making any tea with it yet, but I’ll check it out in the near future. Also, the man I heard about it from uses it an herbal smoking blend, but I don’t smoke anything anymore, so I won’t be able to vouch for that. Perhaps the folks over at @gardenofeden are familiar with Rabbit Tobacco or use it in their herbal smoking blend.

CONCLUSION

Rabbit Tobacco is another one of those amazing plants with incredible properties that can come in very handy in during times of compromised health. Knowledge of such herbs is part of that information that was much more common years ago but has taken a backseat to the modern medical practices in our current day. In some circles though, this information and knowledge is still valued, and, thanks to the internet, it is freely available to anyone willing to look for it.

I’m blessed to have such a friend to share such knowledge with me, and glad that I live in a day and age when it is so easy to verify his claims. Are any of you familiar with Rabbit Tobacco? If so, how have you used it?