Chickweed
Stellaria media
Fresh aerial parts · cooling · moistening
The cool spring mat — a water green for hot, dry, itchy skin.
In the mouth
How it tastes
Green, corn-silk mild, slightly salty-fresh.
Traditional use
Eaten as a salad and mashed as a poultice. Folk practice used chickweed when tissue was hot, tight, and dry — a cooling salt, barely a taste.
In the cup
Fresh in salad. Bruised as a poultice. Dried leaf, 1 tbsp, steeped 10 minutes — milder than the fresh plant.
Story
The cool mat that follows the sun across a winter garden.
Hearth working
Gathered from the south side of the house, it was said to thicken any other working. In this cupboard it is still a cooling green first.
Blood
Salty blood · salt
Salt is cooling and barely a taste. These plants dry first, then move fluid — and water follows. They are mineral salts, not table salt: building, coating to sensitive membranes, thinning stuck mucous, supporting kidneys and the kreb-cycle minerals of muscle and nerve.
Read salty bloodReached for
The promise
A careful hand
Ordinary tea for a healthy adult.
Identify the single line of hairs on the stem. Avoid sprayed ground. Fresh is the better medicine.
Read the whole promiseSits well with
Plantain
Plantago major
The path-side leaf chewed for bee stings and brewed for raw tissue.
Irritable skin · Sore throat · Dryness
Mineralize, soothe, and restore fluid
Calendula
Calendula officinalis
Pot marigold — the gardener’s skin flower, also a golden broth.
Irritable skin · Sore throat
Ground, build, and settle
Violet
Viola odorata
The heart-leaf of spring — a cool green for lymph and dry heat.
Cough · Irritable skin · Dryness
Mineralize, soothe, and restore fluid
Traditional kitchen and folk use only. This is not medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. If you are pregnant, nursing, on medicine, or unwell, ask a clinician before drinking anything as a remedy.