Feverfew - Bachelor’s Button
Family: Compositate (Asteraceae, Matricaria or daisy)
Common names: Altamisa, featherfew, featherfoil, febrifuge plant, feverfew, midsummer daisy,grande camomille (Fr), Santa Maria (Sp),Bachelor’s Button,Mother-herb
Used parts: The dried leaves and sometimes flowers and stems of feverfew are used to make supplements, including capsules, tablets, and liquid extracts.
The leaves are sometimes eaten fresh.
Feverfew looks like a small daisy and has an appearance very similar to chamomile and tansy, to which it is closely related. It is a short perennial plant that grows 15 – 60 cm tall in poor soils along roadsides and abandoned fields. It has small flowers and feathery yellow-green leaves.
In 1978, a British health magazine reported that a 68-year-old woman who had suffered from chronic migraines since the age of 16 tried feverfew leaves with complete relief of her headaches within a few months. Since the 1980’s feverfew has become a highly popular British, French and Canadian phytomedicine used to prevent migraine headaches, relieve menstrual cramps and treat painful joints.
Feverfew was used by the ancient Greeks and early Europeans to treat fevers, repel insects and treat bites and stings1. Its botanical name, Tanacetum parthenium, was derived in part from a Greek story about a workman who fell during construction of the Parthenon but was saved by the timely administration of this healing plant. A different version suggests that the name was derived from the Greek word, parthenos (virgin), referring to the plant’s use in treating menstrual problems.
Historically, feverfew was considered too bitter to take orally; instead it was applied topically to the wrists or head to treat headaches. Medieval healers used it as an antipyretic. It was also planted in house gardens to keep malaria at bay. It has been used as an insect repellent.In Chinese medicine it is described as having a bitter-cooling, sour-cooling flavor, acting as a fire or wood yang element.
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