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Reference

Compendium

Ingredients for spellwork: their formal and folk names, categories, deities and forms, with the sources behind them.

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    313 ingredients

    313 ingredients

    NewCaution
    Botanical Name
    Ulmus rubra

    Slippery Elm

    Slippery elm is a medium-sized deciduous tree of eastern North America, found from south-eastern North Dakota to Maine and southern Quebec and south to northern Florida and eastern Texas, mostly on moist uplands. It usually grows twelve to nineteen metres tall, with a spreading crown, reddish-brown heartwood and broad leaves that are rough above and velvety beneath; its downy twigs, hairy reddish buds and slimy red inner bark set it apart from the American elm. Both its English names come from the tree itself: red elm from the colour of the heartwood, slippery elm from the mucilage in the inner bark. Native Americans ate that bark raw or boiled, and it has long been taken as a demulcent for sore throats and upset stomachs and laid on the skin for rashes. Grieve, noting that it was an official drug of the United States Pharmacopoeia, commends it as a gruel for infants and invalids and above all as a poultice for wounds, boils and burns. The timber, of little commercial worth, has gone into fence posts, wagon-wheel hubs and archery bows. Cunningham makes it a feminine herb of Saturn and air whose power is to halt gossip: burn it and throw a knotted yellow cord into the fire, and talk against you will stop.

    Caution

    AHPA places slippery elm in safety class 1 (safe when used appropriately) and interaction class A (no clinically relevant drug interactions expected). Take it with at least 250 ml (8 oz) of liquid. Take other medicines an hour before it or several hours after, since its mucilage may slow their absorption. Bladder stones have followed the insertion of the bark into the vagina in attempted abortions, which would not happen in normal use by mouth. Its safety in pregnancy and while nursing has not been established. Cunningham's health code marks the bark as safe.

    Forms

    • Bark
    • Powder

    Correspondences

    Elements
    Air
    Celestial Bodies
    Saturn

    Folk Names

    • Gray Elm
    • Indian Elm
    • Moose Elm
    • Red Elm
    • Soft Elm
    See in Compendium