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 | Willow Other Names: European Willow
Botanical Name: Salix alba
Family: N.O. Salicaceae |
Description: |
| A large tree with a rough greyish bark, the twigs being brittle at the base; the leaves are pubescent on both surfaces and finely serrulate; it hybridizes with other species of Salix, it flowers in April and May and the bark is easily separable throughout the summer; flowers and leaves appear coincidently from March to June. |
Habitat: |
| Central and Southern Europe. |
Constituents: |
| The bark contains up to 13 per cent of tannin as its chief constituent, also a small quantity of salicin. |
Medicinal Usage: |
Tonic, antiperiodic and astringent. It has been used in dyspepsia connected with debility of the digestive organs. In convalescence from acute diseases, in worms, in chronic diarrhoea and dysentery, its tonic and astringent combination renders it very useful.
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Ancient Lore: |
WILLOW TREE
SALIX ALBA
The leaves bruised with pepper, and drank in wine, help in the wind-colic.
A well-known tree from which cricket bats are made. It grows 6o to 7o feet
(18 to 21 m) high has a rough bark and narrow, sharp-pointed leaves on its whitish-grey branches. It produces yellow male and green female catkins. Also called the White Willow.
Where to find it: Beside running streams and in other rnoist places.
Flowering time: Spring. Astrology: The Moon owns it.
Medicinal virtues: The leaves, bark and seeds are used to staunch the bleeding of wounds and other fluxes of blood in man or woman. The decoction helps to stay vomiting and also thin, hot, sharp salt distillations from the head upon the lungs, causing consumption.
Water gathered from the Willow when it flowers, by slitting the bark,,is good for dimness of sight or films that grow over the eyes. If drank it provokes the urine, and clears the face and skin from spots and discolourings. The decoction of the leaves, or bark in wine, takes away scurf and dandruff, if used as a wash.
Modern uses: The bark of the Willow contains salicin from which aspirin is derived. Herbalists use the bark and leaves as an astringent tonic and as a preventive treatment against diseases that are apt to recur, such as malaria. Willow bark is anti-inflarnmatory and, as such, is indicated for arthritic and rheumatic conditions including rheumatoid arthritis, gouty arthritis and ankylosing spondylitis. The decoction, made by boiling 1 oz (28 g) of bark in 1 1/2 Pt (852 mI) of water until it measures 1 Pt (570 ml) is given in doses of 1-2 fl OZ (28-56 ml) for fevers, diarrhoea and dysentery. The powdered root can be taken in sweetened water in doses of one teaspoonful. An infusion of the leaves - i oz (28 g) to 1 Pt (568 rni) of boiling water - is a useful digestive tonic. Fluid extracts and tinctures are available from medical herbalists. |
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