Arnica

Arnica is an aromatic perennial of the daisy family, about 18 to 60 centimetres tall, with a flat rosette of downy, oval leaves and large orange-yellow flower heads from May to August. It grows across most of Europe on poor, acid ground, above all in alpine meadows up to almost three thousand metres, and never on lime; it is becoming rarer as farming intensifies and wild plants are gathered for sale. It has a long history in European folk medicine, where a tincture of the flowers or the root was applied to sprains, bruises and wounds, although the plant is toxic when swallowed. German custom was to pick it at Midsummer and hang it on houses as a guard against lightning, hail and fire. Hildegard von Bingen linked it with wolves and noted it as an aphrodisiac used in love magic, and the old name leopard’s bane comes from confusing it with a different plant, Doronicum pardalianches. Kynes associates it with water, Saturn and Hecate, and uses it for love, protection, peace and psychic ability: a candle dressed with its oil serves a love spell, its seeds are scattered at the corners of a property to raise a shield of safety, and its energy quietens restless spirits in a home.