If you ever look down when you walk, you might see plantain growing through a crack in the sidewalk, between spaces in a parking lot or along the path that winds through your neighborhood park. In other words, wherever people walk, plantain appears.
Plantain tries to get our attention by literally growing beneath our feet, possibly to remind us of its gentle, yet powerful medicinal qualities. Examples are the plant's ability to soothe imflamation and to promote healing.
One simple way to work with plantain is as a spit poultice to get some relief from the swelling and itch caused by a non-infected mosquito bite. First make sure you correctly identify the plant. When it first appears in the spring, Plantain grows in a rosette shape close to the ground with oblong rounded leaves that are smooth or sometimes coarsely or unevenly toothed along the edge. Its leaf veins grow parallel and if separated from the leaf, are white and a little stretchy. By mid summer, the plant sends up a thin flower spike.
To make a spit poultice, you can chew the leaf a bit, then make a little wad of the leaf matter mixed with saliva and place it on the mosquito bite. You can loosely cover this with a bandage. You might notice immediately the cooling effect the plant has on your skin. You can change this compress as often as you like until the bite has healed.
If you don't feel comfortable chewing plantain, you can tear a leaf into tiny pieces, mix these with a little saliva and place on the bite.
You can learn more about Plantain and how it was worked with in the shtetls of the Pale of Settlement in our book, Ashkenazi Herbalism.
Photo credit (from botanicalillustrations.org):
Smith, J.E., English Botany or Coloured Figures of British Plants, ed. 3 [B] J.E. Sowerby et al (1863-1899) Engl. Bot., ed. 3
