More Knotweeds

A couple weeks back I wrote a bit about knotweeds. The flowers are small and usually pink and it's the kind of wildflower few people notice. However it was, like most wildflowers, once the source of a variety of medicinal uses. A European immigrant, (Polygonum hydropiper), was used in solutions to treat epilepsy, dysentery, gout, mouth sores, dropsy, jaundice, coughs, and bowel problems. Plant extracts were used to treat and hemorrhoids; hence the once-used common names Arse-smart and Smartass.

It also had some "doctrine of the signatures" applications, thanks to the swollen joints where the leaves grow from the stem - polygonum means "many knees." These presence of these joints indicated to the experts of their day that the plant would be efficacious in the treatment of sore and swollen joints. One of the most famous of those experts, Nicholas Culpepper, once wrote: "It is very good for sciatica, gout, or pains in the joints, or any other inveterate disease, if the leaves are bruised and mixed with hog's grease and applied to the place, and kept on four hours in men and two hours in women, the place being afterwards bathed in wine and oil mixed together, and then wrapped up with wool or skins, after which they sweat a little."

Pennsylvania Smartweed or Pinkweed (P. pensylvanicum) is a common native species that grows from the East Coast to the Rocky Mts. During the spring and early summer it's just one more weed among many, but then all the blooms come on when most of everything else has had its day in the sun. Wildflower lovers would notice it, perhaps a few gardeners as well, but to most folks it would just be a weed. Such is the plight of this genus.

The smartweed moniker isn't because these plants are good at math, or witty and quick with a comeback, but because the leaves have a bitter taste. Other not necessarily mathematical or witty smartweeds include Water-pepper (P. hydropiperoides) and Amphibious Swamp Smartweed (P. coccineum).

Other species of Polygonum found in North America include Western Bistort (P. bistortoides), Douglas's Knotweed (P. douglasii), Willow Smartweed (P. lapathifolium), and Alpine Knotweed (P. phytolaccaefolium), which are all natives, and Yard Knotweed (P. aviculare) and Lady's Thumb (P. persicaria), which are non-natives.

...and by the way, while this will all be ancient history by the time you read this, it's still mid-January, my wife and I are still on the coast of Washington, and we have an interview with Kodiak Island, Alaska in a couple days...

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