There's Nothing Plain about Plantain!

Folklore/Common Names: White Man's Foot, Cuckoo's Bread, Englishman's Foot, The Leaf of Patrick, Patrick's Dock, Ripple Grass, St. Patrick's Leaf, Snakebite, Snakeweed, Waybread, Waybroad

Parts Used Root, leaves, or flower-spikes, depending on usage.

Historical Reference

- Legend has it that Plantain was a young girl who longed for her lover's return and spent so much time watching and waiting for him by the roadside that she eventually transformed into this common roadside plant.

- Plantain was one of the nine sacred herbs of the ancient Saxons and was an early Christian symbol of the path followed by the multitudes of the devout.

- It derives one of its common names, White Man's Foot, from American Indian folklore, as the plant seemed to follow the path of the white settlers everywhere they went. Longfellow made mention of this in the classic Hiawatha

Apparently they weren't alone in this sense, as Mr. Grieve states in A Modern Herbal:

The Broad-leaved Plantain seems to have followed the migrations of our colonists to every part of the world, and in both America and New Zealand it has been called by the aborigines the 'Englishman's Foot' (or the White Man's Foot), for wherever the English have taken possession of the soil the Plantain springs up.

- Many cultures have reference to Plantain as an aphrodisiac.

- A Dr. Robinson of the New Family Herbal of days past, says that the Assembly of South Carolina presented an Indian a "great reward" for his discovery that the Plantain was the 'chief remedy' for the cure of the rattlesnake bite.

- Folklore tells us to place Plantain beneath the feet to ease tiredness, or carry it in the pocket to protect from snakebite. One source says to bind Plantain to the head with a red wool sash to cure headaches.

Medicinal Uses

Cautions: Inhaling psyllium powder (from the seeds) can cause asthma. Unsoaked seeds can cause gastrointestinal problems.
There are no cautions regarding use of the rest of the plant.

Next time you find yourself scratching desperately at a mosquito or spider bite, remember that relief may be as close as your back yard. Find a healthy Plantain leaf, crush it and apply it to the bite to stop the itch! The same goes for bee stings, other bug bites (some say as an antidote for snakebite as well), as well as many skin irritations caused by some members of the plant world. Plantain will also stop minor bleeding when applied to a small cut or injured area. Now isn't that handy to know?!

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