Overview
Calendula is a flowering plant with yellow petals better known as pot marigold. As far back as 1595, the Belgian physician, Dodoens, in his work “The New Herball,” praised it as useful for cooking as well as for herbal preparations for healing. As a curative agent calendula is used in homeopathy and herbalism for the essential first-aid care of wounds, cuts, abrasions, bleeding sores and skin irritations.
Herbalism
As an annual herb, calendula officinalis can be used as a tincture or an infusion, with calendula compresses used to treat wounds, including boils and insect bites, minor cuts and abrasions. Calendula lotion, a preparation sold in health food stores and holistic centers, may be applied directly to skin to relieve itchy and inflamed rashes. It is soothing for eczema and dry, chapped skin. Calendula tea can be taken as a gargle for sore throats, tonsillitis and mouth ulcers and is suggested by herbalists to use after dental extractions to reduce bleeding.
Homeopathic Uses
In homeopathy, calendula can be used as a curative to treat and dress wounds and cuts. Applied as a homeopathic tincture, first diluted into cool, previously boiled water, calendula cleans the injury. Taken internally, the homeopathic remedy Calendula 6C, which is readily available over-the-counter, also assists in the process of healing suppuration. Dorothy Shepherd—a physician and homeopath—advised in her work, “A Physician’s Posy,” to keep calendula tincture “in your first-aid medicine chest; use it for hemorrhages, cut fingers, apply it to the nostrils in nose bleeding, by moistening a piece of surgical gauze or cotton wool.”
Aromatherapy
Similar to herbal preparations, calendula is an “infused oil” because according to manufacturers it is “virtually impossible” to get pure calendula “essential oil.” It can be used in the bath and as a massage oil to soothe irritated skin. Its anti-fungal activity was studied and reported in the “Brazilian Journal of Microbiology,” showing that an oil made from the calendula’s flowers had “good anti-fungal activity” against all of the tested “23 clinical fungi strains.”
Food
In “A Modern Herbal,” M. Grieve writes that calendula “has been cultivated in the kitchen garden for the flowers, which are dried for broth, and said to comfort the heart and the spirits.” Known as the pot marigold because traditionally the dried flowers were added to the pot when cooking soups and stews, it is a bittersweet and salty herb. According to “Natural Home Remedies,” the dried flowers were especially used as a “substitute for saffron to color rice dishes or to decorate salads.”
How to Grow Calendula
Calendula, being an hardy annual flower, is easy to grow. In temperate climates it self-sows, meaning it sets seeds on garden soil in autumn. Its green leaves emerge the following spring. If the faded flowers are cut, new flowers will continually appear throughout the summer. Calendula seeds are easy to sow in pots on the windowsill, or into the open garden in April, but established seedlings are available at garden centers. It grows best in the sun and tolerates most soil types.
About this Author
Christine Williams holds a B.A. and M.A. in literature, and is a licensed homeopath. The co-author of four nonfiction books published by Soho Press about Ireland, Williams has also written a travel book, “So Many Miles to Paradise.” She has been writing and editing for 25 years and is an editor at Allthingshealing.com.
