Scribd Logo
Upload

Welcome to Scribd!

  • 33 views

    The Wonderful, Multipurpose Comfrey Plant: Symphytum Officinale

    Uploaded by

    1miles
    Comfrey is a perennial herb that has been used for nearly 2500 years for its medicinal properties. It can be used as a blood coagulant, to treat lung issues, and help wounds heal. The plant is also valuable for its ability to improve soil quality through its deep root system and leaves that decompose into the soil. While comfrey was once used as a food crop, modern research links its consumption to liver damage in mice. It remains useful for composting, fertilizing soil, and making topical remedies.

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    The Wonderful, Multipurpose Comfrey Plant: Symphytum Officinale

    Uploaded by

    1miles
    33 views3 pages
    Comfrey is a perennial herb that has been used for nearly 2500 years for its medicinal properties. It can be used as a blood coagulant, to treat lung issues, and help wounds heal. The plant is also valuable for its ability to improve soil quality through its deep root system and leaves that decompose into the soil. While comfrey was once used as a food crop, modern research links its consumption to liver damage in mice. It remains useful for composting, fertilizing soil, and making topical remedies.

    Original Title

    COMFREYwordformat

    Copyright

    © Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)

    Available Formats

    DOC, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    Did you find this document useful?

    Is this content inappropriate?

    Comfrey is a perennial herb that has been used for nearly 2500 years for its medicinal properties. It can be used as a blood coagulant, to treat lung issues, and help wounds heal. The plant is also valuable for its ability to improve soil quality through its deep root system and leaves that decompose into the soil. While comfrey was once used as a food crop, modern research links its consumption to liver damage in mice. It remains useful for composting, fertilizing soil, and making topical remedies.

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as doc, pdf, or txt
    33 views3 pages

    The Wonderful, Multipurpose Comfrey Plant: Symphytum Officinale

    Uploaded by

    1miles
    Comfrey is a perennial herb that has been used for nearly 2500 years for its medicinal properties. It can be used as a blood coagulant, to treat lung issues, and help wounds heal. The plant is also valuable for its ability to improve soil quality through its deep root system and leaves that decompose into the soil. While comfrey was once used as a food crop, modern research links its consumption to liver damage in mice. It remains useful for composting, fertilizing soil, and making topical remedies.

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as doc, pdf, or txt
    of 3

    THE WONDERFUL,

    M U LT I P U R P O S E
    COMFREY
    PLANT
    Comfrey (Symphytum spp.)
    has been cultivated and
    valued by many cultures
    for almost 2500 years. A
    native to Europe and Asia,
    the comfrey plant with
    which most are familiar,
    Symphytum officinale, has been
    used as a blood coagulant,
    a treatment for maladies of
    the lung, and as a poultice
    to aid in the healing of
    wounds and broken bones.
    Consumed as a tea,
    comfrey is said to treat a
    variety of internal ailments
    by various folk medicine
    traditions.

    The word comfrey is


    Latin in origin and means
    "to grow together”.
    Though research has
    recently linked the
    consumption of comfrey
    with liver damage in mice,
    thus halting the development
    of comfrey as a modern food
    crop, the plant was once
    widely grown for its medicinal, food and forage value.
    Today it is still valued for its use in salves and other topical skin preparations
    and for its use as animal fodder and fertilizer.

    A fast-growing, herbaceous, perennial plant of the borage family,


    comfrey’s thick and tuberous roots create an expansive root system, allowing
    the plant to “mine” compacted soils for minerals and other nutrients which
    are often difficult for other plants to obtain. It is this ability to help cycle
    nutrients through the soil that has given comfrey it’s designation as a
    dynamic accumulator plant. Like daikon, stinging nettles, and other plants
    that function as dynamic accumulators, comfrey leaves make an excellent
    fertilizer, and provide a nutrient boost to compost mixes. Additionally,
    comfrey leaves are used as a green manure and mulch, being cut, then
    spread over planting beds and left to decompose on site, further helping to
    condition soils. Cutting and placing the first flush of comfrey leaves in
    trenches where potatoes are to be planted is thought to provide the tubers
    with nutrients that will result in an increased yield. It is important to use only
    the leaves of the plant when mulching, as any cut stems have the potential
    to take root.

    A liquid fertilizer can also be made from the comfrey plant by “steeping”
    chopped comfrey leaves in water for several weeks (placing a rock or other
    heavy item on the leaves to keep them submerged) until they form a dark,
    thick liquid. The liquid should be diluted 12:1 - 15:1 prior to application.

    Mature comfrey plants can be cut several times each season, prompting
    some to plant comfrey patches in proximity to compost heaps to take full
    advantage of comfrey’s use as an excellent compost activator. Adding
    leaves of the comfrey plant to a compost heap gives the compost added
    nitrogen, resulting in increased microbial decomposition of the compost. The
    addition of too much comfrey will result in an imbalance in the carbon:
    nitrogen of the compost, and can actually slow the decomposition rate.

    A potting mixture can be made from leaf mold derived from chopped
    comfrey leaves and dolomite mixed together and left to sit in a lidded
    container for several months. Though not suitable for seeds, once well
    rotted the comfrey leaf mold mixture is suitable for use as a general potting
    soil.

    Comfrey is hardy from zones 4 - 9, and will grow in full or partial sun. The
    ease of growth, tall stature and the small, yet attractive, bell-shaped flowers
    of the comfrey plant lend to its use as an ornamental in the landscape, but
    comfrey is not well suited to small garden patches where planting space is at
    a premium as the plants themselves can often grow to 24 - 48" wide.

    Because comfrey will self-sow and is tolerant of most soil conditions, the
    plant can proliferate, potentially becoming a nuisance. The “Bocking 14”
    cultivar of Russian Comfrey (Symphytum x uplandicum) has gained
    popularity in recent years, as this strain of the plant is sterile, and is thus
    unable spread by seed vastly reducing the risk for this comfrey to spread out
    of control once planted. Developed in the 1950s by Lawrence Hills, of the
    Henry Doubleday Research Association (known today as Garden Organic), at
    that organization’s Bocking, UK research farm site. The Bocking 14 cultivar
    is propagated from root cuttings called “offsets” which can, initially, be
    purchased from nurseries and through on-line sources. Once the plants have
    become mature and established in the landscape, gardeners can obtain root
    cuttings from their own plants, giving them an almost unlimited supply of the
    hardy, fast growing and multipurpose comfrey plant.

    You might also like