Yarrow: A Common but Incredibly Healful Medicinal

Yarrow, Achillea millefolium, is one of my favorite flowers because it is tough and the deer don't seem to like it. Its shallow roots make transplanting easy and it tolerates some neglect in the process. It is drought resistant and spreads by shallow rhizomes, so it fills my flower garden even when I forget to water it!

Yarrow is in the Composite Family, not the Parsley Family as some might guess, so please learn to identify it correctly before using it. To the untrained eye, some poisonous plants can be mistaken for yarrow.

With a magnifying glass you can see that the flowers in each flower head consist of a bunch of teenier flowers, which are, in fact, a conglomeration of the Composite Family's signature ray and disk flowers.

Yarrow offers a wide array of medicinal properties and it's helpful to keep some of them in mind no matter where you are. Yarrow's most significant property is its blood-clotting ability. It has been used to staunch bleeding for thousands of years, earning it the name of herbal militaris in ancient Greek times, and soldier's woundwort during the Civil War. Its additional antiseptic and numbing properties help with just about any wound. You can use it on bee stings or yellow jacket bites or to stop nosebleeds. It's aromatic fragrance acts as an insecticide and fumigant.

Yarrow also improves circulation of peripheral blood vessels so yarrow tea is helpful for certain types of headaches. It lowers blood pressure, breaks fevers and helps reduce menstrual bleeding. It can cause miscarriages so pregnant women should avoid it but tea taken after delivering your baby helps reduce bleeding.

Do your own yarrow research. You'll be surprised at how much healing such a "common" plant can provide.

To learn more or to hike with Randi go to http://www.ihiketowrite.com and http://www.fourseasonforays.com