Yellow Dock

Yellow Dock

Scientific Name: Rumex crispus

Part used: Root

In a word: Constipation Cure

Uses: Digestive

Dock plant is a common weed. You can find it growing all over the place, most often, as the name indicates, beside a dock. To positively identify yellow dock, turn to the back of a commercial herbicide package – this dear plant is usually pictured among the intended victims. Most modern gardeners think of yellow dock the same way they do dandelion and burdock, as a useless weed. They’re wrong. The plant is anything but useless and deserves a more respectful title than "weed."

It is fair to say that yellow dock is far from decorative. It has evergreen leaves and a flower that looks like anything but. The seed mass is a rust color, reminiscent of a huge wad of tobacco. So, not everyone can be pretty. But as I like to say, don’t judge a plant by its listing on the back of a can of weedkiller!

Like dandelion and burdock, yellow dock was once a very popular spring tonic plant. In many parts of the world, people will tell you that meat prepared with dock cooks much faster than normal. I would say this is some special feature. All you folks on the run might want to let this plant stay on in your backyards for those occasions when you have to snap together a quick dinner.

During North America’s colonial days, one plant that came as a real surprise to the Europeans, and an unpleasant surprise at that, was poison ivy. The old-time treatment for a bad case of poison ivy (and as these were people who went to the bathroom in the woods, they got some really serious cases) was yellow dock boiled with vinegar and applied to the sores.

Dock leaves were likewise used to treat scrofulous sores, sore eyes, and glandular swellings. To cure itchy skin, they were bruised, mixed with butter, lard, or cream, and placed on the problem area. The colonials also used the plant as a treatment for the runs, which was a common problem in the New World. They believed that if the plant was eaten on a regular basis, it would improve the eyesight as well.

The Mennonites were quite familiar with this weed. They called it halwer gaul and considered it the best blood purifier on the planet. Accordingly, they used it to treat liver problems of all kinds along with the skin problems resulting from poor liver function, and still do to this day. It’s interesting to note that Arab physicians recommend the same plant for hepatitis and poor digestion, and they are a long, long way from the Pennsylvania Dutch Country.

Not surprisingly for a plant with such widely recognized powers in aiding the liver, dock leaves were mixed with elderberry to draw the poison out of rattlesnake or copperhead bites. Like echinacea, yellow dock was a traditional snake plant, thought to help the body rid itself of venom.

In 1898, a homeopathic doctor had a few choice words to toss in on this topic: "There are three localities in which this remedy acts very markedly, respiratory organs, bowels, and skin… There is perhaps no remedy under which the sensibility of the mucous membrane of the larynx and trachea become more exalted than this one."

So up to this point, yellow dock is good for the blood, liver, stomach, skin, and the respiratory tract. Could there be more? You know that the answer is yes.

Good old Gerard recommended yellow dock as a key ingredient in a tonic which he claimed "cureth the dropsie, the yellow jaunders, all manner of itch, scabes, breaking out, and manginesse of the whole body… purifieth the blood from all corruption; prevaileth against the green sickness very greatly, and… maketh young wenches to look faire and cherrie like." I think my favorite line from that passage is "maketh young wenches to look faire and cherrie like." I wonder if Gerard called all women wenches. I think not. But if you want your wench to look fine, or if you are a wench yourself and would like to look the same, this is the plant for you.

Various cultures around the world have used yellow dock for ailments ranging from cancer and tuberculosis to syphilis and leprosy to ringworm and hemorrhoids. In India, they even use the root juice for toothaches and the powdered roots for gingivitis and as a dentifrice. In what is perhaps a two-for-one deal, the Maori of New Zealand chew the leaf first and then apply it to wounds, which they claim then heal without visible scars. The overall universal conclusion is that this plant is one of the best.

On a scientific level, researchers feel that herbal extracts may inhibit escherichia, salmonella, and staphylococcus. In other words, yellow dock contains several antimicrobial agents capable of killing off nasty little bacteria.

Now this is a plant you can buy, collect, or let grow in your garden whenever it shows up, which it certainly will. The evergreen leaves and the root are the parts to use in your tonic, so gather them when you want. Remember, as with all our tonic ingredients, the rule is: the fresher, the better.

QUICK REVIEW

History: European treatment for constipation

Science: Contains compounds which speed bowel emptying

Practitioners opinion: Should not be used long term

Directions: Tincture (1:5, 25% alcohol): 2.5 ml 3 times daily