Medicinal flowers Gardening
Here are 7 medicinal flowers that you can grow in your own garden at home. There are many medicinal flowers and their uses are different, but they all add color and beauty to the garden.
We value beauty for its own sake, but many colorful flowers offer much more than just their beauty. Some can be used medicinally, others are good to eat and provide food and habitat for many beneficial insects. Some flowers are threatened by habitat destruction, as are birds and other wild things, so growing flowers is a good idea. Give some space in your garden to multi-purpose flowers and prepare to be amazed at what medicinal flowers can do for your health, your palate and your spirit.
Medicinal flowers: wonderful annuals
Annual flowers bloom from seed and produce seeds in one growing season. Annuals often bloom longer than winter-hardy perennials and do well in fresh soil that is dug up and amended with organic matter. The seeds of these plants can be sown directly in the garden.
If you're a new gardener and aren't sure which little green things are weeds and which plants are flowers, you can sow some seeds indoors in a small container and use the seedlings as visual guides. These annuals, as well as the perennials discussed later, bloom best if they receive at least six hours of sunlight each day. If your planting plans are limited by shade, see "Woodland Wonders" later in this article.
1. Calendula (Calendula officinalis)
Whether you like your calendula orange, yellow, or somewhere in between, they're all easy to grow in cool weather and will bloom for weeks or months if you remove the seed heads before they mature. Many cooks sprinkle a few calendula petals into eggs or rice as the "poor man's saffron," and feeding chickens with calendula flowers lays eggs with dark yellow yolks. Calendulas make great cut flowers, but their greatest use may be in topical oils or creams for burned or injured skin. In a recent study of 254 breast cancer patients undergoing radiation therapy, calendula ointment proved superior to the most widely used pharmaceutical preparation in preventing radiation burns. These latest findings are among a growing number of studies validating calendula's ability to help heal injured skin.
2. Sweet alyssum (Lobularia maritima)
When Michigan State University entomologists counted beneficial insects on 46 plants, sweet alyssum outperformed all but one native plant (boneset) and bloomed longer than its competitors. Integrated pest management programs in California, Colorado, and Wisconsin also recommend sweet alyssum as a beautiful plant for pest control purposes, but attracting hoverflies and other beneficials is one of the flower's talents. Sweet alyssum's fine structure and spreading habit make it ideal for edging beds or planting with other flowers in containers—and older open-pollinated varieties are especially fragrant.
3. Ammi (Ammi Majus, A. Visnaga)
"Growing lots of plants with umbels (clusters of flowers with umbrella-shaped stems) like dill and fennel will attract beneficial insects to your garden," says Lynn Byczynski, a cut flower grower in Lawrence, Kan. ., and is the author of The Flower Farmer. "I grow Ammi majus and Ammi visnaga, two white-flowered cousins that look like wild Queen Anne's lace," says Byczynski. The two species have only minor differences; Both look great in a vase in the garden, and you may want to add them to your slug- and snail-fighting arsenal. When Egyptian researchers put two types of snails in ammi potion, many were killed and those that survived laid very few eggs. Although not as aggressive as Ammi Queen Anne's Lace, reseeding can be done, especially in warmer climates. Keep ammi out of pasture because animals that ingest furocoumarins – found in the seeds and other plant parts of ammi – are more sensitive to light and prone to severe sunburn.
4. Nasturtium (Tropiolum majus)
Nasturtiums are so easy to grow that they are recommended for children's gardens, and involving children in growing plants is a way to offset what author Richard Louw calls nature-deficit disorder. Nasturtium is on many lists of deer-resistant plants, and German researchers have discovered that nasturtium leaves and immature seed capsules contain a rare sulfur compound called glucotropolin, which has antibacterial properties — a long-known use by the natives of Peru. As nasturtium
5. Sunflower (Helianthus annuus)
Anthropologists don't know if the Native Americans of the Southwest began cultivating sunflowers intentionally, or if sunflowers followed the tribes and took over the primary role, sprouting in trash heaps at the edge of settlements. However, European explorers in America quickly recognized the value of the sunflower, which became a popular crop in Russia in the 19th century. At the time, religious rules prohibited the use of common cooking oils during Advent and Lent, but sunflower oil is not mentioned in the scriptures. As a result, Russian plant breeders developed productive varieties that made the oil-producing sunflower an important commodity.
6. Echinacea (Echinacea purpurea)
Often called purple coneflower, Echinacea is easy to grow, and the flowers are frequented by bees and butterflies. You can use echinacea to make your own immune system booster. Yes, a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine last summer reported that Echinacea was ineffective against a common cold virus, but I also read the follow-up points from the American Botanical Council. A third of what it should have been.
7. Day Lily (Hemerocallis species)
Daylilies, by comparison, have burning power, and their rope-like roots make them useful for corrosion control. I always keep a few daylilies around, but I don't understand why some gardeners are fascinated by a flower that only lasts a day. Now that lilies are blooming again, I've become a fan of them - not so much for the showy flowers, but for the big, tasty buds. Picked just before they open and cooked in a little olive oil until caramelized (less than five minutes), daylily buds are a wonderful little vegetable. Imagine the tenderness of asparagus with the delicious flavor of a baby snap bean, and you have a pan-fried day lily bud.
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