Valiant and Versatile

Great Mullein towers with virtues.

I climbed up from the walking trail to the horseback riding path today and came upon this tall fellow. You may have noticed one popping up uninvited at the edge of your yard and pulled it out without knowing that it’s a better remedy than any cold medicine on the market. The velvety leaves of the Great Mullein, or verbascum thapsus, have been used for centuries to make a tea that relieves chest colds, coughs, bronchitis, and asthma.

Mullein is a biennial. Year one, it collects nutrients and energy from the soil and all you get is a big wooly rosette of bluish, grey-green leaves – but year two, look out! All that energetic goodness bursts upward and shoots up a stalk that can grow to 10 feet tall. For all that impressive height, the flower spike that appears at the top of the stem yields rather small yellow flowers that mature from the bottom to the top in successive spirals blooming only two or three at a time for a few hours.

“One leaves his leaves at home becoming a mullein and sends up a lighthouse to peer from. I will have my way, yellow. A mast with a lantern, ten, fifty, a hundred, smaller and smaller as they grow more."

William Carlos Williams

Mullein answers to scores of fascinating names - Aaron’s rod, Jupiter’s staff, flannel plant, hare’s beard, candlewick plant, hag’s taper, donkey’s ears – and is beneficial for everything from lining shoes to making candles and torches, warding off the evil eye, and predicting the weather.

My favorite mullein folklore is its ability to reveal the romantic inclinations of someone by bending over and pointing toward their house when a suitor, standing nearby, makes a wish.