💊 Plantain
🍴 Edible Parts
🤝 Companions (7)
⚠️ Keep Apart (2)
💊 Medicinal Uses
Premier wound-healing and drawing herb. Allantoin stimulates cell proliferation and tissue repair. Poultice draws splinters, infection, and venom. Contains aucubin (antimicrobial iridoid), mucilage, and tannins. Internally: soothes gastritis, IBS, and urinary tract inflammation. Antihistamine for hay fever. Seeds provide soluble fiber like psyllium.
📜 History & Traditional Uses
Called 'white man's footprint' by Native Americans for spreading with European settlement. Anglo-Saxons listed it among nine sacred herbs. Used on battlefields as wound dressing for centuries. Shakespeare referenced it in Romeo and Juliet. Traditional European spring tonic green.
📝 Notes
Ubiquitous 'weed' — one of the most medicinally valuable plants you'll find in any lawn or sidewalk crack. Broadleaf plantain (P. major) and narrowleaf (P. lanceolata) are both medicinal. Harvest leaves young for salads. Chew into a 'spit poultice' for emergency field first aid.