Is Mullein poison or medicine?

Verbascom thapsus, called Mullein, is a beautiful weed with furry leaves.  I pulled out a truck load of weeds from a new garden.  The garden owner allowed me to save the mulleins.  I explained that this plant contains rotenone,  a natural insect repellant.

I have been doing some reading about mulleins.  I learned that rotenone use may be phased out due to concerns that the insecticide could be a cause of Parkingson's Disease (ok, I was surfing the web and fooling around on Wikipedia.). It seems to me that in future, people will say that there is no safe minimum dose of rotenone.  Very tiny amounts of the stuff may cause disease... Kind of like a biological plutonium.  I certainly don't want to go near the bag of rotenone for sale at the local Agway store.

On the other hand, there are records of mullein used as medicine for thousands of years.  It sounds like herbalists of the past valued this plant a great deal.  I am sure there is no danger in allowing mulleins to colonize my customer's garden.  If we get lucky, maybe the plant will repel mosquitoes, although no one has suggested that yet.  My client just wants to be free of mosquitoes but I can not promise that.

What worries me is my farm friends at DACRES.  They keep a jar of dried mullein in the kitchen for herbal tea.  I think it is not safe.  Never mind the thousand years of medicinal use, I say that tea is not safe.  Why ingest rotenone when you do not have to?  There are other herbs that you could use.  And my friends were using the mullein tea when they were not even sick!  I should go have a talk with them.

For me, the most interesting part of all this was finding 4 leaf clovers beside the mulleins.  There were a lot of 4 leaf clovers -and I was always finding them quite close to a mullein plant.  I suspect that the mullein has a chemical capable of driving away competing plants.  In fact, my guess is not just one chemical but a mixture of 3 or more chemicals.  I have forgotten the name for this effect, the ability to fight the neighboring plants with chemicals at the roots.  This is the same thing that the walnut trees do, causing bare spots in the lawn under walnut trees...

It was so fun for me to predict the location of the 4 leaf clovers.  I am usually not at all magical.  I had a magical moment with my daughter.  But sometime soon I will have to tell my garden client that the lovely mulleins probably do not repel mosquitoes.  I really hope they will allow the plants to stay. I need time to find out which insects the mullein can repel.

Chigirsky Tea from Bergenia

Bergenia cordifolia, known to gardeners as Pig Squeek makes a great tea.
Here is what I found on Wikipedia (in Russian, translated with Google Translate):

"used for landscaping in stone gardens, shrubs and trees arrays. Gardeners brought several forms of flowers of different colors. The plant prefers partial shade and shady places with moderately dry, fertile soil. Propagated by dividing the bush in autumn.

The plant is in the first row of the world tannins (content tanidov 2 times greater than willow or spruce bark, and 4 times greater than in oak bark), it is used for the sole tannage and yufti and nets and tarps impregnation.

Gives a black and brown paint.

Soaked in water and washed from tannins rhizomes are edible, and overwintered, blackened leaves are used to flavor tea - Mongolian tea [5], or chigirsky tea."

I received a jar of tea from the botanical garden on Solenetsky Island in the region of Archangelisk, Russia.  I have been wondering what's in it for years.  But it's really good tea, and I suspected it might be Bergenia because of the photo on the tea box.  Finally today, I thought to look up the plant on Wikipedia.  I was surprised to find more information on the Russian language version of the page about this plant.  Maybe Google Translate can help me learn more Russian herbal knowledge.

I am so excited to discover the high tannin content of this plant!  I hope to start printing on fabric using homemade ink.  This is going to be so wonderful!  India Flint - here's to you!  I need to buy her book of natural dyes and art projects.

The Bergenia tea tastes like orange pekoe black tea but without the caffeine.  I bet that I can find a nice big patch of Pig Squeak, and gather some leaves today.