Comfrey

Comfrey is a bristly perennial of the borage family, one of some thirty-five Symphytum species that share the name, and is set apart from the rest as common or true comfrey. Native to Europe, it likes damp grassland, riverbanks and ditches, and has become an introduced weed in North America. It grows from about thirty centimetres to one and a half metres tall on winged stems above a deep taproot that is black outside and white within, with large lance-shaped leaves and drooping clusters of tubular bells in cream, yellow, pink or purple, followed by glossy black nutlets. Its name comes from a Latin word meaning to heal, literally to boil together, and names such as knitbone and boneset recall its long use, from classical times through the Middle Ages, in poultices of leaf and root for sprains, bruises and broken bones; mashed root packed round a broken limb was said to dry hard like a plaster cast. Folklore held that a comfrey bath restored virginity, and in Norfolk it went into pig feed to keep the animals from being bewitched. Northcote records a village ointment for which white comfrey was used for a woman and the red-flowered kind for a man. In magic it is a herb of safe travel, worn, carried or tucked into luggage against loss and theft; the root serves money spells, and burned it strengthens banishing and binding work.