What is Witch Hazel?
Not the comic strip character, nor the local Wiccan named after a tree.
There are bottles of the stuff in the pharmacy.
What is it?
What is it good for?
How is it made?
It’s an alcohol tincture made from a plant which can be used for minor skin irritations, like razor burn. It’s also used in some hemorrhoid medications and pads.
I found it very soothing after giving birth to a large baby, for reasons I won’t elaborate on.
Cause you were drinking it?
It also has astringent properties.
Cause you were drinking it?
heh. I didn’t make that dumb joke twice on purpose.
Here’s a page with information of the herb itself. I believe the stuff in the store is distilled, not merely tinctured. Just tinctured witch hazel is not clear - it’s cloudy.
My favorite facial toner is a piece of watermelon (rind, pink stuff, seeds and all) pureed in the Vita-mix and poured into a bottle with three parts witch hazel. It’s a little sticky, but it gives me the clearest and softest skin imaginable. It lasts in the cupboard for at least a year.
Straight witch hazel is also great for insect bites - reduces the swelling and takes away the itch. I make a plaintain poultice with witch hazel for sunburn and bee stings. Just find some plantain growing in your yard and smash it up with enough witch hazel to make a slimy mess. Then smear it on stings, bites, sunburn, razor burn, whatever is red and swollen. When it dries and falls off, the skin is visibly less red and doesn’t hurt or itch.
You know I wondered what to do with all that plantain growing in our back yard… :smack: :dubious:
That :dubious: wasn’t to me, right? 'Cause if you live on Earth, chances are very good that you *do *have plantain in your backyard. It’s a plant found on every continent in copious quantities. Legend has it that the Eastern Native Americans called it “White Man’s Footprints” because everywhere the Europeans went, plantain would pop up. If the :dubious: was to the plantain you can’t get rid of in your backyard, by all means, carry on. And pull it all up and make use of it next spring. [/plantain hijack]
But why is it called “witch hazel”? I mean it sounds so…wicked.
Somehow I doubt it’s in my backyard. It just doesn’t seem like the kind of thing you’d see popping up in the New Mexico desert.
At least two forms of plantain are commonly found in New Mexico - broadleaf and narrowleaf. Really guys, it’s everywhere. The entire distribution map at the USDA website is colored in. The whole US, including Alaska and the Virgin Islands!
How long does that take?
You’re not alone. I bought some and also had to look it up, since the label was no help at all:
'Bout 20 minutes or so. I usually use the poultice when I’m outside working, and just plain witch hazel if I’m in a hurry or don’t want macerated leaves falling off my shoulders onto the carpet.
Note: This does not absolve you of the duty to wear sunscreen! The cellular damage is still done to your skin, it just doesn’t hurt as much! I’m really, really fair with skin that burns after 10 minutes or so in the sun and never tans. Even with heavy duty high spf sunscreen, I can only be in the sun a couple of hours -which makes my hobbies of camping and gardening challenging!
It’s also good for removing that awful smell produced by canine anal glands. We use it for cleaning off the doggie booties that have expressed themselves.
???
Don’t “plantain plants” grow large, banana-like fruit? Are there other plants that are in the plantain-plant family that don’t bear banana-like fruit?
Oh … these things. OK, gotcha.
(But where are the big, banana-like fruits?)
Narrowleaf plantain plants were around here and there in the New Orleans suburbs where I grew up, but I wouldn’t have considered them particularly common on developed property (at least in my experience). I usually saw them in undeveloped lots.
In the Midwest at least, you can see a broadleaf version of those plants in lawns fairly commonly - assuming herbicides don’t wipe them out for that season. They get mowed down so the flower stalks don’t develop, but you’ll see their rounded leaves with prominent veining growing out in a ring on stems from a central point.