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Life Everlasting (Pearl-Flowered)

Botanical: Antennaria Margaritaceum
Family: N.O. Compositae

---Synonyms---American Everlasting. Cudweed.
---Parts Used---Leaves, flowers, stalks.
---Habitat---North America, Kamschatka and in English gardens. Grows wild in Essex, near Bocking, and in Wales. Cultivated in Whin's Cottage garden by the writer.


---Medicinal Action and Uses---Anodyne, astringent, pectoral, useful in diarrhoea, dysentery, pulmonary affections, as a poultice for sprains, bruises, boils, painful swellings. Said to produce sleep. When hops have failed, applied externally to the head, a decoction of the flowers and stalks used in America as a fomentation for pained and bruised limbs, and for bronchitis.

Leaves linear, lanceolate, acuminate; alternate stalk branched at top; corymbs fastigiate; root perennial, creeping, spreading, becoming almost a troublesome weed; stalks very downy, and white flowering branches form a flat broad bunch, each branch with numerous crowded heads, on short branched downy peduncles, the middle ones sessile; calyx scales bluntly ovate and white, but not downy, flowers July to September. Easily propagated by creeping roots. The plant is slightly fragrant.

See:
CATSFOOT
CUDWEED
GNAPHALIUM
WHITE BALSAM.

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Bear in mind "A Modern Herbal" was written with the conventional wisdom of the early 1900's. This should be taken into account as some of the information may now be considered inaccurate, or not in accordance with modern medicine.

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