Author: Linné, Family: asteraceae (compositae)
The coltsfoot is one of the most popular medicinal herbs, also one of the earliest flowers in spring.
Characteristically the leaves don't appear until the flowers are withered.
The leaves, and to a lesser extent the flowers, are one of the best cough remedies, either prepared as a
tea or through inhalation of the smoke.
Recently, there have been warnings about a potentially harmful alkaloid being part of its
constituents, and it is recommended to use it no longer than 6 weeks over the year.
More about coltsfoot in MGMH
Text References: Healing
| VH 16, 278 |
Coltsfoot leaves, which resembled their name, spread out on woven drying
racks, were asthma relief when smoke from the burning dried leaves was
breathed, and a cough remedy with other ingredients in tea, and a pleasant
seasoning for food. |
| MH 27, 443 |
Coltsfoot was collected from damp open ground near the river. Its slightly
salty taste made it useful for seasoning, though Ayla gathered some for
coughs and asthma. |
| MH 30, 495 |
A handful of colorful flowers was on the ground beside Ayla, bright
red blooms with long thin petals that appeared to have been dipped in a
bright red dye, and bunches of large golden-yellow flower heads, mixed
in with white, downy spheres. |
| MH 30, 496 |
"I also picked some coltsfoot for coughs, for the sick camp, and a
red-flowered plant - I don't know the name - whose root is very good for
deep coughs and bringing up phlegm from the chest," she said. |
Text References: Food
| CB 6, 77 |
Feast for New Cave
Ayla watched Uka stir up chunks of the meat and bone from the neck
of the bison that were cooking with wild onion, salty coltsfoot, and other
herbs. (...)
Pigweed greens, lamb's quarter, young clover, and dandelion leaves
seasoned with coltsfoot were cooking in another pot, and a sauce of dried,
tart apples mixed with wild rose petals and a lucky find of honey steamed
near another fire. (...)
It was a feast worthy of the occasion. |
| CB 20, 322 |
Ayla's Cave
I'll need to get some wood, she thought, and my food won't last too
long, I should get some more. (...) Let's see, new burdock and coltsfoot
and young dandelion leaves, and fern, most of it will still be curled. |
| VH 5, 79 |
Winter Storage
She was making a storage container, thinking about everything she had
to do to make herself secure for the cold season ahead. (...)
It would be nice to have a little salt, but there's no sea around here.
Coltsfoot tastes salty, and other herbs can add flavor. |
| VH 16, 278 |
see above, Healing |
| VH 25, 412 |
Ptarmigan
She had searched up and down the valley for the right combination of
greens and herbs, and had brought them to the stone oven. She collected
coltsfoot for its slightly salty taste; nettles, pigweed, and sprightly
wood sorrel for greens; wild onions, garlicky-tasting ramsons, basil, and
sage were for flavor. Smoke would add its touch of flavor as well, and
wood ashes a taste of salt. |
| MH 9, 133 |
It was the wrong season for the greens she like to use - coltsfoot,
nettles, pigweed - and for ptarmigan eggs, or she would have stuffed the
cavity with them, but some of the herbs in her medicine bag, used lightly,
were good for seasoning as well as healing, and the hay she wrapped the
birds in added a subtle flavor of its own. It might not be exactly Creb's
favorite dish when she was through, but the ptarmigan should taste good,
she thought. |
| MH 9, 135 |
Ptarmigan
Without salt, people preferred distinctive, spicy flavors, and she
had flavored the gruel with sage and mint, and added bitterroots, onions,
and wild carrots to the mixed rye and barley grains.
With some salt, she thought, and the sunflower seeds she had seen in
a storage room, and the dried currants ... and perhaps coltsfoot and rose
hips from her medicine bag, it might make an interesting filling for the
ptarmigan. |
| MH 27, 443 |
Mamutoi Spring Feast
For the big Spring Feast, nothing left over from the previous year
would be eaten. (...)
Coltsfoot was collected from damp open ground near the river. Its slightly
salty taste made it useful for seasoning, though Ayla gathered some for
coughs and asthma. |
| PP 4, 51 |
Dinner for Two
"For tonight, and tomorrow morning, I'm making soup with the tongue
and vegetables, and the little bit we have left from Feather Grass Camp,"
she said. (...)
"And maybe I'll put some coltsfoot in it because it has a kind of salty
taste." |
| PP 7, 95 |
It was cooking in a ground oven, a hole in the ground lined with hot
rocks in which she had put the deer meat seasoned with herbs, along with
mushrooms, bracken fern fiddleheads, and cattail roots she had gathered,
all wrapped in coltsfoot leaves. |
| PP 11, 179 |
Food in the Delta of the Great Mother River
Nearby there was also coltsfoot and several kinds of ferns that had
flavorful roots. The delta offered an abundance of foods. |
| PP 13, 222 |
She looked for plants like pigweed, salt bush, and coltsfoot, high
in natural salt, to restore their somewhat depleted reserves, along with
other roots, leaves, and seeds that were beginning to ripen. |
| PP 30, 494 |
Feast for S'Armunai
When bubbles appeared, she broke strips of lean dried meat and some
fatty cakes of traveling food into the water to make a rich, meaty broth.
(...) She flavored it all with a choice selection of herbs including coltsfoot,
ramsons, sorrel, basil, and meadowsweet, and a bit of salt saved since
they left the Mamutoi Summer Meeting, which Jondalar didn't even know she
still had. |
| PP 44, 752 |
(...) but she had seen some young coltsfoot and sorrel leaves. When
she went to pick them, she saw some spring mushrooms and then crab apple
blossoms and elder shoots. She returned to their campsite holding the front
of her tunic out like a basket, full of fresh greens and other delicacies. |
|
Abbreviations |
Editions |
| CB |
The Clan of the Cave Bear |
The page numbers refer to the hardcover editions by Crown Publishers, Inc, New York 1980, 1982, 1985, 1990.
Book 1-3 are the Special Collector's Edition, I don't know if the page numbers differ from those of the 'normal' hardcover editions. |
| VH |
The Valley of Horses |
| MH |
The Mammoth Hunters |
| PP |
The Plains of Passage |
| (...) |
omission |
Copyright |
| ... |
original in text |
All book quotes: © Copyright Jean M. Auel
The format and text contents of this site are the property of the author |
| MGMH |
'A Modern Herbal', by Mrs. M. Grieve |
Comments, suggestions, errors, anything else ... emails are welcome!
|
