I had been having a hard time figuring out what blog post to kick off this website with. On this past weekend, my husband and I ventured out to a fly fishing spot of his. I don’t fish but I like to hike, fly my drone, and take photos. Seeing as 2024 is the year of plant medicine, I am making a point to learn about the plants around me.
That day, I started focusing on teasel and its medicinal uses. Visually, it’s a strange plant. It’s hated amongst fly fishermen because the strange cone developed at year two is perfect for snagging lines. Interestingly, I heard this from my biologist father-in-law, the head is useful in the process of producing cloth. The dead heads (lol insert Grateful Dead joke here) of the closely-related fuller’s teasel is used in the “teasing up” of wool.
(Fun fact that you might not care about: Taesan is the Anglo-Saxton word for fulling or cleaning cloth.)
Harvesting
The only part of teasel that is medicinal, according to all the sources that I read, is the root. So don’t go around snatching up just any teasel root. The plant goes through a two-year cycle. In the first year, it lies flat to the ground. In the second year, it shoots up into what most people recognize as typical teasel, with its purple flowers that dry to the wool-teasing consistency. (See below for example of both)
You are supposed to forage the root before it shoots up. This is when the root is largest and packed with the medicinal goodies.
According to Matthew Wood, an famous herbalist, quote found on the blog of Aquarian Bath, (which was a fab resource for me) he says, “It is best harvested right before it shoots up. That is when the root is big and sumptuous. It quickly gets very small and I imagine, loses properties to the fast growing stalk. Also, it might take twenty small roots to equal a big one in size and medicinal value.”
Please note, I am not an expert in wildcrafting. I felt comfortable harvesting teasel because according to experts, nothing looks like it and I have gotten positive IDs from a local biologist.
As with all wildcrafting, be aware of all the rules of thumb. Basically: don’t be dumb, uniformed, or unkind to the land. Here is an excellent blog post about it available on The School of Forest Medicine website. Read this before you try to harvest anything. Seriously. Some plants out there will literally kill you.
Medicinal Properties
I consulted several books, blog posts, and a podcast as to the benefits of teasel. Interestingly, it’s not listed in the Encyclopedia of Herbal Medicine as being particularly useful. Many other resources beg to differ, but I saw in several places that Western medicine hasn’t paid too much mind to it until recently.
- FOR PAIN: Dr. Patrick Jones on Herbs with Rosalee podcast said, “It’s sort of an unfashionable herb. They used to use it a lot back in the old days, but it’s sort of bell bottom, is teasel. Things go in and out. I think it’s ready for a comeback. I was reading in the old, dusty herb books. They used to use it for pain, neuralgias and weird pains they couldn’t explain.” [Taken from the podcast show notes.]
- In TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine), teasel root ‘tonifies the liver and kidneys’ and works on painful lower backs and knees, weak legs, cartilage, and joints. It is also held to promote circulation and reduce inflammation.” (from The Big Book of Backyard Medicine).
- LYME DISEASE: “The acute infection of Lyme disease, as explained in an excellent monograph by herbalist Stephen Harrod Buhner, involves these same issues of join pain, blood circulation, and tonifying of cartilage. Buhner finds results of using teasel root tincture for Lyme in the US are promising, though inconsistent in different regions.” (from The Big Book of Backyard Medicin) The Pacific Northwest Medicinal Plants book instructs folks to “take the tea or tincture for at least 1 month to make the body inhospitable for the Lyme spirochete and to reduce Lyme-related joint pain.”
What To Do With Teasel Root?
I am not going to pretend that I am an expert of creating herbal recipes. There are better, more nuanced sources for that information. The majority of the teasel remedies that I read were tea or tincture, made from the harvested root. Here are some of them:
- Tincturing dried teasel root on Aquarian Bath. (Scroll down to the middle.)
- Harvesting/tincturing fresh teasel root on Lady Barbara’s Garden blog.
- Making double-strength teasel root tincture on YouTube video.
- How to make tinctures 101 from Healthy Home Body LLC blog.
Want To Learn More?
Here are some resources that I found to be useful. Peruse them at your leisure:
- PODCAST: Teasel’s Medicinal Uses: Herbs with Rosalee, episode with Doc Jones. You can watch this on YouTube or find it on Spotify (below)!
- BOOKS: You can buy them but also don’t forget that you can likely get them from your local library. If they aren’t physically in the library, your branch may have an interlibrary loan system you can take advantage of.
- Big Backyard Book of Herbal Medicine by Julie Bruton-Seal (Author), Matthew Seal (Author)
- Pacific Northwest Medicinal Plants by Scott Kloos (Author)