Echinacea is more than just a pretty flower. It is a recognized immune system booster, first used by the Indigenous people of North America for relief from cough and sore throat. For those of us who use it to prevent colds, we owe a debt of gratitude to two men who met back in the early 1950's.
Before we get to that story, a little about the plant itself...
Echinacea gets its name from the Greek word, echinos, meaning hedgehog. The perfect name for this flower! Echinacea comes in purple, magenta, white, yellow and cream. Besides the prominent, cone-like, "hedgehog" centres, the flower has petals which point downward.
They may look like a crowd of people with umbrellas, however, these are not rainy day plants. Echinacea is a member of the Sunflower family. It won't grow in the shade. Think of the wide Prairies, and plant Echinacea in a spot that gets full sunlight all day.
They're very hardy, and survive year after brutal year of Eastern Canadian Winters. These drought resistant perennials withstand temperatures from -40C (40 below on the Farenheit scale), to 40C with the humidex (that's 104F)!
The flower, and its roots have been used medicinally by the Cheyenne, Lakota, Crow, Comanche, and other indigenous tribes forever. It was introduced to European settlers, and in 1737 the plant and its medicinal use was described in John Clayton's Catalogue of Plants, Fruits, and Trees Native to Virginia.
In 1953, Alfred Vogel, his wife and daughter, travelled from Switzerland to the Black Hills of South Dakota, USA. There, he met an Oglala Lakota Medicine Man, Ben Black Elk, who taught him how to use Echinacea externally for wounds and snake bite, and internally for cough and colds.
Black Elk gave him Echinacea seeds which Vogel took back to Switzerland, and cultivated. His naturopathic medicines grew out of the time Black Elk spent sharing with him generations of knowledge about the plant. The A. Vogel company website says, "the plants grown from these seeds were the basis for Alfred Vogel's experiments with Echinacea, which became his most important healing plant".
Alfred Vogel died in 1996, at the age of 94. The statue in the garden museum in Teufen, Switzerland shows him carrying a bouquet of Echinacea.
Ben Black Elk died in 1973, at the age of 74. His lifelong passion for his Lakota heritage, earned him the title of the "fifth face" on Mount Rushmore. His father, Nicholas Black Elk is credited with the revival of Indigenous culture, through poet John Neihardt's 1932 book, Black Elk Speaks.
One of Black Elk's descendants lamented that not one penny of the millions made in sales of the book, ever went into scholarships for their people. As for shared profits from Echinacea sales, I have not found any mention of this either.
Echinacea has been widely studied. It has been proven to fight infection by stimulating the cells which heal the body from infection. Echinacea stimulates phagocytosis, which is what happens when white blood cells and lymphocytes consume invading organisms.
A major warning: Echinacea is so good at stimulating the immune system, that it must be avoided by anyone with an autoimmune disorder, such as Lupus, Rheumatoid Arthritis, or Multiple Sclerosis.
People who have had organ transplants, must take immunosuppressant medication to prevent their bodies from rejecting the new organ, or organs. Echinacea counteracts that, potentially leading to organ rejection and failure.
Echinacea also has blood thinning properties, and may be harmful to someone taking blood thinners.
I've been taking it for thirty years. While I have had the occasional history-making cold (headline: Woman Gets Man Cold!), it has kept me cold free year after year (that, and hand washing).
So, thank you to Ben Black Elk for so generously sharing generations of knowledge about the Echinacea plant, and thank you to Alfred Vogel for experiments and product development, so that millions of us can stay healthy through cold season!
Floral Photographs Copyright of: Ruth Adams, Widow's Endorphins Photographic Images Inc.
Thanks for sharing the benefits of this plant.
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