It’s amazing how perceptions can shift your attitude. While sipping coffee this morning, I did a lot of grumbling about my garden beds filled with weeds. Grrr. The voracious plants were sucking the life out of my tomatoes, peppers, beets and mizuna. Why had I let things go for so long???!!
Breakfast done, I walked behind the house to the still-under-construction medicinal demo garden. Good heavens, I couldn’t even see the tiny butterfly bushes (Pluerisy root) for the amaranth and lambs quarters. While it’ll be a while before the little bushes are big enough to yield helpful medicine, every lambs quarters leaf (Chenopodium album) was a soup-making ingredient. This tender weed tastes terrific when simmered then blended in chicken stock. It’s delicious hot or chilled. It’s packed with Vitamins A, B2, C, Niacin and minerals like calcium, iron and phosphorus. And it’s free!! I’m glad I’ve got chicken bone broth in the freezer.
Another two weeds growing rampant even as the weather cools are purslane and mallow. Friends, indeed.
Purslane (Portulaca oleracea) spreads in a mat of thick green stems sporting paddle-shaped glossy, fairly stiff leaves. Very much a succulent, these leaves grow at the stem joints and ends, and are filled with a slightly sour, salty juice. It can be cooked like spinach or eaten raw in salad. I like picking the leaves and munching on them as I wander the garden.
It’s been used to support pulmonary function, helping to open bronchial airways. Some use its extract against fungal infections such as athlete’s foot. It is said to naturally lower cholesterol due to its high pectin content.
Common Mallow (Malva sylvestris), not to be confused with Marshmallow, a favorite because it’s tenacious, beautiful, and very useful.
Left to its own devices, branches will spread and mound to more than two feet high, with its 1/2-inch flowers appearing among roundish, crenelated leaves that are up to 2-inches across. I pull these plants up by the roots often, but the herb is back within two weeks.
Mallow bears flowers, fruit, and leaves all together throughout the growing season. The fruit pods look like tiny, flattened cheese rounds, giving rise to one of its alternate names, cheese weed. Others are high mallow, wood mallow and tree mallow.
This is one stubborn weed. It insists on being around in case I need it! Good thing, too, because one of its strengths is the mucilage in its leaves and roots. This is used to soothe inflamed tissue in the respiratory tract and other mucus membranes. This quality has been helpful to relieve dry, inflamed tissues in colds, flu, coughs, bronchitis, and asthma.
I’ve used a cooled mallow tea to calm sunburn, burns, and nasty hornet stings. I make and keep mallow tincture at the ready.