MULLEIN
(
VERBASCUM THASPUS
)
Plant range and properties: This soft and fuzzy-leafed plant is not native to Appalachia, but it is a vital part of the medicinal and magical lexicon. It was brought here from Europe, and Asia where it originated. Mullein was so beloved by Europeans that it was brought along to the Americas by colonists as they imagined what medicines they might need in a strange new world. The plants people chose to carry with them across the sea tended to be those with formidable medicinal or magical powers.
Medical and magical uses: Mullein is used to treat many things, but particularly respiratory illnesses and colds. Mullein leaf tea is a classic and foundational part of Appalachian folk medicine.
Mullein was used as a general lung herb in Appalachian folk medicine. Its bright yellow flowers towering over the shorter plants in the fields made it an easy plant to identify and locate looking out over the rolling hills. The leaves were gathered in late summer and autumn to dry for winter use. Dried leaves could be mixed with other helpful cough and cold herbs, like the native wild cherry bark, rabbit tobacco, and European horehound. Traditionally the tea or decoction (a long-simmered tea) would be used sweetened with brown sugar, or honey if you could get it, to further soothe sore throats and hoarseness.
If you have a sore back, you can rub it with mullein to cure it.
Cherry bark and rabbit tobacco combined with mullein makes a good cough medicine or syrup.
If you ever feel like there is phlegm stuck in your throat, a teacup of mullein tea often does the trick.
Mullein is one of the plants used in bending charms to see if a love interest returns your affections. First, you must know the direction of their home, and in the evening, bend the mullein stalk in that direction. In the morning, if the stalk has righted itself, it means the apple of your eye surely returns your feelings. If the plant dies, this unfortunately means they do not share those feelings. This charm was done with many other plants in Europe that feature tall stalks.
One of the loveliest things about mullein is you can make candles with it. “Candlewick” is one folk name for this plant, and that is just what it is! In autumn, you can dip the dried flower stalks in wax or fat or roll up the individual leaves and dip them like tapers and lay them on wax paper to set. Light a bit of the raw plant material and stand them in a small dish of sand. They make the perfect candle for an evening of spellwork.
ONION
(
ALLIUM CEPA
)
Plant range and properties: Onions are one of the most commonly used culinary ingredients yet they are also a powerfully healing plant. We have many species of wild onions, such as onion grass (Allium veneale) and the classic, round garden onion we see at the grocery store. Both are wildly useful as food and medicine and have a long history of both uses around the world. In Ancient Egypt there are many sculptural honorifics to the onion’s importance as a food to both peasants and royalty. The Greeks and Romans also enjoyed onions culinarily and magically, offering them to gods in ritual. All of these differing cultures shared a belief in the power of the onion to get rid of evil and disease.
Medical and magical uses: Onions have been used for medicine and magic for as long as humans have been aware of them.
In Appalachian folk magic, red onions worn around the neck are believed to ward off disease. An onion cut in half and left on a dish in a sick person’s room is also used to absorb the disease so it can be discarded safely outside, or better yet, burned.
In Black Southern folk magic, a red onion held in the left hand will rid one of conjuration. A bit of wild onion can also be placed in a conjure bag to prevent being conjured by another.
To avoid bad luck, always burn your onion skins in the fireplace and never throw them on the ground.
Carry an onion in your pocket to bring good luck.
A spell to tell the weather, gathered in Kentucky: On the night of January 5th, take twelve onion skins and fill them with salt. Name each one after the months. Check the next morning, and each month’s rain shall be foretold by how much moisture has gathered in each onion skin.
Onions are also good to cook down into a hot poultice, or mash of plant materials, to be applied to the body externally. Onion was fried in a pan with some hog lard and then a bit of cornmeal mixed in to hold it all together. This hot mash of onions was used on the chest for congestion and colds, often mixed with turpentine.
Hot onion poultices were also placed on the throat for a sore throat and made into a cough syrup.
To make your own onion syrup, finely chop the bulbs of some wild onions and place them in a clean, dry jar. Cover them with honey and infuse for three to five days. Make sure to stir with a clean spoon occasionally. If kept cool, this syrup can keep for about three months. Take liberally as desired by the spoonful the next time you get a sore throat or cough.
RHODODENDRON
(
RHODODENDRON MAXIMUM
)
Plant range and properties: Rhododendron is one of the most iconic flowering shrubs of Appalachia. In spring, the beauty of the gorgeous pink, white, and purplish flowers bunching among leathery, matte leaves through twisted thickets in shady coves is unrivaled. In Appalachia, many folks call rhododendrons “laurels,” along with mountain laurel (Kalmia latifolia), a different but related plant. This is one reason this common native plant is in so many place names. I, myself, live in Shelton Laurel, off the Big Laurel River in Marshall, North Carolina.
Magical and medical uses: The smoke of rhododendron, or the rose-tree in Latin, was said to have been inhaled by visionaries in the tribes of Ossetians, the people of the Caucasus Mountains who descended from Scythians. In Appalachia, wearing a necklace of the leaves was believed to ward off disease and preserve good health. Even though the flowers, leaves, and wood and associated smoke are toxic, all containing the neurotoxin grayanotoxin, the leaves are also known as “lucky leaves” in Hoodoo, perhaps due to their evergreen nature. I’ve met a handful of old timers who still refer to this plant as “poison ivy” due to its ability to kill livestock who unwittingly munch the attractive yet poisonous foliage.
PEACH
(
PRUNUS PERSICA
)
