Ipsophyto

Garlic: Allium sativum Lilliacea family

Garlic is one of the world’s most familiar plant medicines, familiar to most people due to its distinctive appearance and pungent smell, renowned for its culinary use throughout the planet.

Botany
The plant is one of the huge Lilly family members, with botanists believing it to have originated in Asia. Garlic is a biennial, taking two years to complete it’s life cycle and is usually propagated from the individual cloves of the bulbs.

It is a monocotyledon, having only one seed leaf, like onions and grasses. The leaves are thin lanceolate blades, of a dark green hue, although not as dark as leeks, their cousin. The leaves are characterised by their parallel veins running up the length of the leaf either side of its mid rib vein. The plant can grow up to 18 inches(45cm) whilst during flowering, the spike can reach a further foot(30cm).

Growing it
Garlic is very easy to grow. The plant loves moisture, although hates being waterlogged. It prefers a rich sandy loam, requiring free draining soil wherever it finds itself. As for soil acidity, slightly under neutral pH (around 6.5) will prove ok. If cloves are planted in the autumn they will usually do a little better than cloves planted in the spring. This is because the plant needs to have felt a winter. It is possible to confuse the plant by placing February bought bulbs in the fridge at less than 5C for a week or two before planting out, yet the bulbs will probably be smaller than autumn planted ones.

Medicinal use

Garlic has been used as a medicine for thousands of years, and has built a reputation for killing vampires. I believe this is because of its proven abilities to kill bacteria, viruses and fungus. It can also kill potential love with the ladies if your beau does not like the smell !

Parts used

The individual cloves; raw is best, as it maintains all the potency, which rapidly diminishes with cooking.

Harvest
When the leaves turn yellow around mid – late July, depending on your region. The whole bulbs are then lifted and dried to allow the outer skin to harden before being stored

Constituents
Among the literally thousands of compounds within garlic, is a volatile oil, containing alliin, which after crushing or chewing is enzymatically converted to alliciin. Germanium is present, as are substantial amounts of mucilage.

Actions

Antibacterial, antiseptic, antifungal, antiviral, warming expectorant, due in part to the mucilage, reduces platelet clotting, anthelmintic, hypocholerestolaemic, hypolipidaemic, vasodilatory and more…do your own research!

Applications
As a fiery herb under the dominion of mars (according to Nicholas Culpeper) it is no great surprise that this plant is renowned for expelling endoparasites from the body. Check out the glyph of mars and you see the arrow leaving the circle. There you go.

This plant has a traditional use as an expectorant to help clear coughs and colds. This is due to the passage of the volatile oil components along and through the lungs where it loosens mucus and promotes its leaving via the mucociliatory escalator. It has been used with great effect for treatment of atherosclerosis(fatty deposits clogging up the arteries) through the reduction of fibrinogen in blood. As a vasodilator it reduces blood pressure. It is also used in dietary control of diabetes and hypoglycaemia because of resultant improvement in pancreatic abilities to produce insulin and glucagons.

In short, this is one of the most treasured and valuable herbs to have in your bathroom, sorry kitchen cupboard. As said before, the plant can kill most pathogenic organisms (in fact it has been placed in the Control Of Substances Hazardous to Health handbook for people in the catering trade, as it is pretty corrosive in large doses)

Recent research from the University of East London has shown it substantially destroys the antibiotic resistant MRSA. This makes me wonder whether it is purely the smell that puts people off using it. Sod ‘em, I love it. Top herb!

It secures a place in a publication about herbs for men, not just because vampires were traditionally cast as men, but because lets face it ladies, many of the best chefs are blokes!