Along with burdock (where you touch the white schmutz on the back of the leaf and touch your tongue to taste the bitterness so know you have the right herb) and chickweed (where you hold a sprig up to the sun to see that there are hairs on only one side of the stem), St. J's has one of those foolproof methods of being sure you have the right plant. When you are first looking for it, EVERYTHING looks like the pictures you've seen. But if you hold up a sprig and look VERY carefully at the back of a leaf, you should see tiny black dots (see third photo). Those are oil glands and that oil is red. Sometimes you will get a reddish stain on your hands from rubbing the leaf between your fingers, but more often by doing the same with the bright yellow flowers. The flowers themselves are rather distinctive having very sparkly stamens sticking up out of the middle.
From Midsummer's Day on through the summer, we cut the flowering tops (meaning flowers, stems and leaves, cutting each tip and stopping just before we come to side branches that haven't yet bloomed) and either tincture them in alcohol or infuse them in olive oil. These two preparations do very different things.
St. John's wort has been touted as the end-all and be-all of antidepressants. To a point, it has indeed worked wonders for many, many people. I find that if I'm subjected to too many cloudy days in a row, just one dropperful of tincture in a little water and I have my face up off the floor in no time. Folks who are intent on abusing antidepressants will abuse this as well, and no one should take St. John's wort in addition to a precription antidepressant without checking with your doctor first. There is another use for the tincture that most people don't know about and this is where I have seen the most amazing results. St. J's tincture is a grand muscle-relaxer with none of the groggy nonsense usually associated with muscle relaxing drugs. It is most effectively used when one has "overdone it" either with a new yoga class, a long hike or first time on the old bike this season. A dropperful in water before bed and chances are very good you won't have that awful tight feeling in your muscles that you were expecting upon awakening.
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