Woundwort grows from a hedge as if to mark some hurt, not to heal so much as to witness it. Hedge woundwort, Stachys sylvatica, belongs to the betony, horehounds and catmint of the waysides. It has small tight whorls of “blood and bandages” flowers – purply red clasps with white markings – nettle-like leaves and a hairy stem that when rubbed has a stink bad enough to do you good.
Mrs (Maud) Grieve described hedge woundwort in her A Modern Herbal (1931) as “a coarse, hairy, malodorous plant, common in woods and hedges”. She quotes earlier herbalists who claimed that “stamped with vinegar” it might be a useful poultice to take away wens and inflammations of the lymph nodes. A distillation of the flowers was used to make the heart merry and the spirits lively and, like all woundworts, it was used for staunching blood.
In the 17th century the herbalist John Gerard used hedge woundwort for treating injuries from pub brawls in London. I recently spent a Friday night in A&E (as an observer rather than a patient, thankfully), and the extent of wounds and blood coming in was shocking. Yet such a volume of injury was nothing out of the ordinary for an A&E department. Imagine what it would look like if the patients had to be bound with bunches of woundwort to stop the bleeding. The hedge apothecary can no longer cope with the scale of the hurt we do to each other.
Even though the hedge woundwort has lost its place in the pharmacy, it is still a vital part of the hedge community. Hive, solitary and bumble bees, and larger flies are visiting these late flowers for the nectar tucked inside them when there are very few sources of food elsewhere. The freshness and vitality of the plant lifts the spirits and, according to Green’s Universal Herbal of 1832, toads are fond of living in its shade. Now that they are hopping towards extinction I wonder if woundwort stands as a marker to the hurt we have inflicted on these and other creatures.
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