Purple Loosestrife Tea

Purple Loosestrife tincture has a history of being used for gastroenteritis, dysentery, ulcers, liver problems, fevers, constipation, and typhus- a sometimes fatal bacterial infection that causes flu-like symptoms, rash, and brain inflammation. An infusion of the herb was gargled and swished for sores in the mouth and throat.

Culpeper preferred purple loosestrife over eyebright for treating the eyes. He claimed that it “…cleanses and heals all foul ulcers whatsoever, by washing them with the water, or laying on them a green leaf or two in summer, or dry leaves in winter. This water, when warmed and used as a gargle, or even drunk sometimes, cures the quinsy, or king’s evil of the throat (peritonsillar abscess). The said water applied warm takes away spots, marks and scabs in the skin; and a little of it drunk, quenches extraordinary thirst.”

Purple loosestrife was originally planted as an ornamental for its showy purple flower spikes and hardy, clumping habit. This herbaceous perennial quickly escaped garden cultivation and can now be found growing in wetter soils where water meets land such as margins of lakes, soggy drainage ditches, marshy areas, fens, floodplains, bogs, wetlands, and disturbed areas left to go wild again. It can also tolerate drier growing conditions, but in a wet, sunny, open meadow it can form large drifts or stands, becoming a monocrop. It is now listed as a highly invasive plant in much of the eastern US. Some states even go so far as to make it illegal to plant, sell, or even possess purple loosestrife.