Common Selfheal

Description:

Prunella vulgaris grows 5 to 30 cm high (2-12inches), with creeping, self-rooting, tough, square, reddish stems branching at leaf axis. The leaves are lance shaped, serrated, and reddish at tip, about 2.5 cm (1 inch) long and 1.5 cm (half an inch) broad, and growing in opposite pairs down the square stem. Each leaf has 3-7 veins that shoot off of the middle vein to the margin. The stalks of the leaves are generally short, but can be up to 5 cm (2 inches) long. The flowers grow from a clublike, somewhat square, whirled cluster; immediately below this club are a pair of stalkless leaves standing out on either side like a collar. Flowers are two lipped and tubular. The top lip is a purple hood, and the bottom lip is often white; it has three lobes with the middle lobe being larger and fringed upwardly.

Habitat:

It is often found growing in moist areas, waste ground, grassland, woodland edges, and usually in basic and neutral soils.

Notes:

Self-heal is edible: the young leaves and stems can be eaten raw in salads; the plant in whole can be boiled and eaten as a potherb; and the aerial parts of the plant can be powdered and brewed in a cold infusion to make a beverage. Topically, a poultice of the plant is applied to irritated skin, as a disinfecting agent and to pack wounds in the absence of other wound-care material. It was considered by the Chinese to "change the course of a chronic disease".