The wonders of Calendula

I don't know if you have Calendula in your or a friend's garden, or even somewhere in your neighbourhood but if you do, start using it as a food and medicine.

Calendula (Calendula officinalis) is a plant that is pretty well everywhere and that's a good thing! Its pretty, attracts lots of beneficial insects and has amazing healing properties.

Any kind of Calendula is useful but the old fashioned yellow or orange are by far the best 👌

So why should we eat or use it? Well, the flowers contain vitamin A and two kinds of fatty acids, it's full of antioxidants and healing compounds that make it a potent ant-inflammatory, whether drunk as a tea or infusion or rubbed on fresh or as an oil. Add to that that it actually builds new capillaries while helping the existing ones and you can see why it's a go-to herb for many folks with wounds.

It's got antimicrobial properties as well so rubbing crushed flowers on minor wounds helps heal them up quickly without scarring. As a bonus, it helps move lymph around and out of the body. Lymph is what transports all of the waste that comes from our cells or infections (or even over indulging a little). It goes into out liver to get broken down and excreted.

Prepare your Calendula by adding fresh petals to your food, crush up fresh flowers heads and apply the juice directly to wounds or make a golden oil or infusion from them.

In a pinch,just crush it up and and put it in a wound.

A tip: when you harvest the flowers, don’t just get the petals, get the while flower head. There are potent healing oils in the flower base that you dont want to miss out on.

This flower is a burst of sunshine throught the year, tolerates tough, dry conditions and is easy to propagate from seeds (or gently dig up a whole plant and replant it in your garden or a pot).

Calendula also makes a spectacularyellow dye.

Some of you may have seen that I've been writing a series of posts about herbs and making herbal remedies at home. I want to share what I know of this topic so that, as the world gets crazier, folks will have other avenues of medical care, namely those of themselves and their community. If you look back over this blog, you can see heaps of info on the topic, plus loads and loads of posts on herbs and using Australian bushfoods from a white perspective. If you haven't been around on in the @hivegarden and @naturalmedicine communities for long, you may be interested in looking back. There's w-a-a-a-a-y too much there for me to repost and the Hive system doesn't let you vote on old posts so, if you're happy with what you find, I believe that there is now a tip option...