Plant Allies: Focus on Cloves
Syzygium aromaticum or more commonly known as cloves. Cloves are ubiquitous in most kitchens around the world from India and Southeast Asia to Northern Europe and North America. Cuisines all over the world use cloves to add a warm spice to balance the use of ginger and cinnamon.
Cloves are often thought of as just a culinary spice, but they have some wonderful medicinal properties. Most well known in herbalism for its analgesic properties, it’s been used to help soothe the pain of toothaches when applied topically it has a numbing effect on the nerves. They are also a wonderful carminative (helping digestion) and circulatory stimulant. Cloves are often used in conjunction with ginger and cinnamon for this reason. It has also been shown to treat parasites.
I always keep cloves in my herbal first aid kit. You never know when you might find yourself with a tooth or gum ache or having eaten something that doesn’t agree with your stomach.
Properties
Edible Parts: dried flower buds
Energetics: drying and warming
Family: Myrtaceae
Identification: Cloves are very easy to identify, they look much like a mini dried unopened flower. It is in fact an unopened flower bud.
Habitat: An evergreen tree native to the Maluku Islands of eastern Indonesia. It grows in tropical places but can be grown in cooler climates in a heated green house.
Medicinal properties: Analgesic, carminative, circulatory stimulant, vermifuge, antiseptic
I use cloves in two of my holiday soaps, not just because they smell amazing but because they also have a warming affect.
Want to try cloves in a drink? Check out my Spice Tea recipe.
You can use cloves in meat dishes, pies, drinks, as a flavor for DIY toothpaste, as an aromatherapy and so much more. How do you incorporate cloves into your life?
