Herbs

Search for the health benefits of the tobacco plant and you will find pages happy to promise you something. The truthful answer is shorter than any of them: for your …

Like their relatives, the high mallow and althea plants are sweet and soft. Even their leaves are delicately covered with velvet-like hairs. Dioscorides already recommended this plant in the 1st …

The opium poppy plant (Papaver somniferum) is the original source of some of the most valuable medicines humans have ever had, and of some of the most destructive drugs. Morphine …

The yerba mate plant comprises the ingredients of a trendy drink in South America, especially in regions where the diet is meat-based. Its aroma, chemical composition, and effects resemble those …

Over the ages, the hemp plant has been grown to obtain textile fibers for ropes and fabrics. The drunkenness and mental disorders that the men working with hemp fibers suffered …

Poison hemlock (Conium maculatum) is one of the most toxic plants in North America. Every part is poisonous, there is no antidote, and people are sometimes killed after mistaking it …

Prickly lettuce (Lactuca serriola) is a tall, bitter wild plant whose milky sap was used in European folk medicine for centuries as a mild sedative, a cough remedy, and a …

The red eyebright plant has been used since the Middle Ages and onwards to heal conjunctivitis, blepharitis (inflammation of the eyelids), superficial keratitis (inflammation of the cornea), and eye tearing. …

The great 11th-century Arabic physician Ibn Sina (Avicenna) said the bee balm plant “has the admirable property of giving comfort and joyfulness.” From the early 17th century onwards, the Barefooted …

The wolfsbane plant is one of the most poisonous flowers grown in gardens anywhere in the world. Every part of it — the leaves, the hooded flowers, and above all …