Check out the latest addition to my online apothecary!

Wild Cherry Bark

Wonderful Wild Cherry Bark is one of my favorite herbs to work with…bark takes patience when extracting the medicinal properties, so I enjoy filling the house with the aroma of fresh-picked cherries while the bark is reducing on my stove.  The deep red stain it leaves in my teapot and canning jars is a testament to it’s power.  Cherry bark is very often found by itself as a tea, infusion, tincture or syrup, and is recommended for lung conditions including spasmodic cough, wheezing, chest oppression, asthma, whooping cough and croup.  Long standing coughs that are spasmodic, irritable, deep, wheezy and just won’t go away will benefit from a well prepared dose of cherry bark.  Prunus virginiana and chokecherry are other names that you will find attached to the theraputic herb, and (as always) when shopping for herbs, make sure it’s certified organic!

From Western Medicinal Plants and Herbs: “Historically, physicians considered chokecherry bark a useful recuperating herb because of its tonic properties and its ability to relieve mucous membrane irritation in the gastrointestinal, respiratory, and urinary tracts…[also] extensively used in tea or syrup for coughs, as a blood tonic, for fevers, colds, sore throats, diarrhea, lung ailments, bronchitis, pneumonia, inflammatory fever diseases and dyspepsia.” (p. 353)

And I can’t help quoting extensively from one of my favorite Herbal Materia Medicas, The Energetics of Western Herbs by Peter Holmes: “The outer bark of the lovely wild cherry tree is best thought of as a relaxant remedy for the Upper Warmer, the thorassic area, with a secondary systemic restorative effect. […] Because of it’s somewhat drying nature, more moist, i.e., demulcent, remedies such as Licorice root and Fennel seed, will go well with it.” (p. 510)

Need I say more…?  Cherry Bark is one of four herbal infusions that make up Dr. B’s Cough Syrup, along with Lobeila, Licorice Root and Horehound.