Common
Name:
Wood Betony, Lousewort, Elephant’s head, Parrot’s
beak, Indian warrior, Beefsteak plant, Bishop’s wort, Canada lousewort – The
etymology of betony is obscure. It may be geographic, referring to the Vettones
(Latin betonica), an early Celtic
people of the Iberian Peninsula. It may
also be linguistic in that the Celtic bew
meaning ‘head’ combined with ton
meaning ‘good’ would suggest that ‘bew-ton’
would ameliorate a headache. This species grows in wooded areas and is thus differentiated
as ‘wood’ to distinguish from the swamp betony.
Scientific
Name:
Pedicularis canadensis
– Pediculus is Latin for little louse;
the generic implication is that the wood betony may have been used against lice.
The original taxonomic speciation was in Canada; the Latinized name canadensis was assigned to indicate this
provenance.
The wood betony is a very distinctive flower that is
native to North America; it is readily recognized and remembered as its myriad
descriptive names attest. This may be the reason for one of the more egregious
cases of mistaken identity that pervades the literature of natural medicinal
plants. It has the same name as one of the most well-known herbs of Europe, Stachys officinalis, the other, Old
World wood betony, a perennial grass that
has a purple spiked flower at the top (Stachys
means ‘ear of grain’ in Greek) that is common in open grasslands and wooded
areas in Eurasia and North Africa. Its beneficence as a herbal remedy is so
well established that it is reflected its species name; officinalis is Latin for ‘of a storeroom’ from which the English
word officinal, meaning ‘kept in stock by druggists’ derives. Since the two flowers are separated by the
Atlantic Ocean and bear no relation to each other, there must be some reason
for the transference of the name to the New World. The fons et origio of the
dual identity is likely that P.
canadensis became manifest to early colonists as a potent drug after having
learned of its medicinal use by Native Americans; they accordingly gave it the
same name as their beneficent home-country herbal, S. officinalis. Both wood
betonies have similar reddish-purple vivid coloration which may have contributed
to the botanical namesake; the old became the new.
The Old World wood betony S. officinalis
has been a renowned herbal for over two millennia. The chief physician of the
Roman Emperor Augustus attested that it was a proven cure for forty-seven
different maladies. A Roman proverb advises that one should “sell your coat and
buy betony.” By the middle ages, mystical powers were attributed to its use; in
the 16th Century, Erasmus of Rotterdam asserted that the herb was
‘good against fearful visions” while ‘driving away devils and despair.’ The
phantasmagoria extended to animals. Snakes were said to fight to the death and kill
each other if placed in a ring of wood betony, there being no means of escape.
Wounded harts supposedly would eat wood betony for its remarkable restorative
properties. The inimitable English herbalist John Gerard, author of the 1597 Great
Herball (sic) offered the general guidance that it ‘preserveth the lives
and bodies of men from the danger of epidemical diseases’ and was good for
jaundice, palsy, dropsy, head troubles, convulsions and gout, among a great
many other things. Throughout the Middle Ages and well into more recent times,
wood betony prescriptions have been extensive, ranging from ‘a
cure for the bites of mad dogs’ and ‘good for those that are wearied by travel’
to ‘the green herb bruised or the juice, applied to any inward hurt, or outward
wound in body or head will quickly heal and close it up.’ The 1666 edition of Medicina
Britannica provided that “the most obstinate headaches cured by daily
breakfasting for a month or six weeks on a decoction of Betony made with new
milk and strained.” It was the king of herbal remedies.
The New World wood betony P. canadensis was not nearly as well established as the old. This
is due in no small part to the marginal acculturation of the Native Americans that
extended only to an oral history for the conveyance of historical
practices. According to D. Moorman in North
American Medicinal Plants, betony was widely used by a number of tribal
groupings not only to treat maladies, but also for aphrodisiacal and veterinary
purposes, some of which are likely whimsical. The Cherokee used it as an
antidiarrheal, especially for “bloody discharge from bowels,” in addition to
the more common uses as a cough medicine, a dermatological and a
gastrointestinal aid. The Iroquois, on the other hand, used it as a heart
medicine and as orthopedic steam bath for sore legs. The Meskwaki and the
Ojibwa used it as a love potion – a sylvan cantharis of sorts. According to an
oral account of a member of the latter tribe “the root was added to some dish
that was cooking without the knowledge of people who were to eat it, and, if
they had quarreled some, then they would become lovers again.” However, the interviewee reported that it was
frequently misused. From the veterinary perspective, the Cherokee used it in
dog beds to rid the puppies of lice and the Menominee added chopped up root to
make their ponies fat and to be “vicious to all but the owner.” What is clear
from this accounting is that the North American wood betony was used
extensively by numerous tribes for a wide range of purposes.
When the New World was settled by the colonists from
the Old World, P. canadensis became
conflated with S. officinalis so that
the properties of the latter were conveyed to the former. The Pennsylvania
apothecary and printer Christopher Sauer wrote of the efficacy
of S. officinalis in The
Compendious Herbal published serially between 1762 and 1778. In a recent
revival of the book William Weaver notes that “there are several native
betonies, and those with the leaves and flowers most similar to the European
plant were evidently used as substitutes.” The uses of native wood betony by
the colonists must have been based in part on what they learned from the Native
Americans about P. canadensis and in
part about what they remembered from their previous deep-seated appreciation of
S. officinalis. There is one anomaly
with this association that warrants special mention, as it is the most noted of
the etiology of betony. This concerns the origin of the common name lousewort
and the reference to lice in the genus name
Pedicularis (little louse in Latin). The National Audobon Society Field
Guide to North American Wildflowers provides the detail that both the
common and genus names “refer to the misconception once held by farmers that
cattle and sheep became infested with lice when grazing on the plants.” This
attribute applies only to the New World wood betony and must therefore somehow
derive from the practices of the Native Americans. However, the only known
citation is for the use of the plant to prevent the infestation of lice in dogs
and not the attraction of lice to other animals. This bit of folklore will
necessarily remain unsettled, and the alternative name of lousewort will
unabashedly persist.
The original Old World wood betony is available
commercially as an herbal remedy primarily directed at headaches and as an
astringent. Some chemical analysis has been performed to indicate that S. officinalis has a tannin content of
about 15 percent, which would endorse its use for vulnerary applications. There
is also some indication that the plant contains glycosides that act to reduce
blood pressure, the hypotensive effect could therefore alleviate headaches. The
New World wood betony P. canadensis,
though not sold as an herbal commercially, is afforded a number of chemical
constituents including betulinic acid, caffeine and tannin though these have louche
reliability. One reason for uncertainty is that the lousewort is a member of
Orobanchaceae, the broomrape family, which consists of plants that are either
holoparasitic or hemiparasitic (fully obligate or partially parasitic) on other
plants, attaching to the host’s roots with an appendage called an haustorium,
which is similar in form and function to the haustoria of fungi. Thus their
chemical constituency depends in part on the extractions from the host plant. However, both types of wood betony were used
for a wide range of ailments by both the Europeans and the Native Americans
without any known harmful side effects and with some rather convincing testimonial
accounts. Their quiddities must be sound.