Health Benefits of Mullein with jim mcdonald

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Today’s episode is my third interview with jim mcdonald and it’s brimming with soooo much information about the health benefits of mullein (Verbascum spp). 

When jim told me he wanted to do a really long episode on mullein, I admittedly wasn’t prepared for how long he really wanted to go. But he told me that he never feels like he gets to truly share all that he wants to share about mullein. And who am I to deny him (or you, for that matter!) that opportunity?

So grab your cup of tea, get cozy and bring your notepad and pencil because there’s a lot of mullein goodness packed into this episode! And don’t miss downloading the mullein handout jim prepared just for you; you’ll find the link in the section below.

Why should anyone care about this weed? Well, to get started, here are a few occasions when you might reach for mullein:

► When you have a cough… especially a specific kind of cough, listen in to get the details

► If you’re dealing with stress incontinence… jim shares which part of the mullein plant can be especially helpful

► When you need a relaxing nervine… but it doesn’t work this way for everyone, so listen in to hear who’s most likely to be helped by mullein

By the end of this episode, you’ll know:

► Several hints for working with mullein smoke (including as a possible aid to quit smoking tobacco)

► The species to grow if you want to harvest mullein flowers (and why you can pick them all without fear that you’re overharvesting)

► A toxic look-alike to be aware of before wildcrafting for mullein

► Tips for increasing the shelf life of mullein-infused oil

► How mullein can amplify the effectiveness of other therapies for certain types of pain

► and so much more…

For those of you who don’t already know him, jim mcdonald is an herbalist in southeast Michigan (that cool state that looks like a mitten you can see from space) where he teaches, sees clients, wildharvests, and concocts a plethora of diverse herbal formulas.

His approach to herbalism blends European folk influences with a bit of 19th century eclectic and physiomedical vitalism, which he tries to spice up with a bit of humor and discretionary irreverence so as not to appear to be too serious about life. 

jim hosts the websites www.herbcraft.org and herbcraft.podia.com which list his offerings and convey his thoughts of plants and herbalism. (And if you’ve ever wondered, the lack of capitalization is because the dots over the "j" and the "i" just look super cool together).

I’m excited to share our conversation with you today!

-- TIMESTAMPS -- for Health Benefits of Mullein

• 01:12 - Introduction to jim mcdonald
• 04:24 - Isn’t mullein just a “beginner’s herb”?
• 08:00 - Identifying mullein and avoiding toxic lookalikes
• 14:44 - Mullein nicknames
• 20:11 - Mullein for coughs
• 26:01 - What about smoking mullein?
• 34:15 - Mullein safety
• 35:58 - Mullein as a lymphatic herb
• 42:55 - Hints for herbal infused oil
• 47:47 - What about Greek mullein?
• 50:30 - Mullein as a relaxing nervine
• 55:19 - Mullein root for the bladder
• 1:03:28 - Mullein for nerve pain
• 1:08:30 - jim’s experiences with mullein for pain
• 1:17:28 - Propagating mullein
• 1:19:16 - Esoteric uses for mullein
• 1:22:58 - Mullein candles
• 1:23:51 - Mullein as a stop-smoking aid
• 1:28:36 - Learning opportunities with jim
• 1:32:10 - How herbs instill hope in jim
• 1:40:18 - Herbal tidbit

Get Your Free Handout!

Connect with jim

• Website | Herbcraft.org
• Online Learning | Herbcraft.podia.com
• Instagram | @herb.craft
• Facebook | @jimmcdonaldherbalist

Transcript of the 'Health Benefits of Mullein with jim mcdonald' Video

Rosalee de la Forêt:
Hello and welcome to the Herbs with Rosalee Podcast, a show exploring how herbs heal as
medicine, as food and through nature connection. I’m your host, Rosalee de la Forêt. I created
this Channel to share trusted herbal wisdom so that you can get the best results when
relying on herbs for your health. I love offering up practical knowledge to help you dive deeper
into the world of medicinal plants and seasonal living.

Each episode of the Herbs with Rosalee Podcast is shared on YouTube, as well as your favorite
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Rosalee de la Forêt:

Okay, grab your cup of tea and let’s dive in.

When jim told me he wanted to do a really long episode on mullein, I admittedly still wasn’t prepared for how long he really wanted to go, but he told me that he never feels like he gets to truly share all that he wants to share about mullein, and who am I to deny him that opportunity? So, grab your cup of tea, get cozy and bring your notepad and pencil because there’s a lot packed into this episode beginning with is there such a thing as a beginner herb?

For those of you who don’t know already know jim mcdonald, he is my good friend, as well as an herbalist in Southeast Michigan, which is that cool state that looks like a mitten you can see from space, where he teaches, sees clients, wildharvests, and concocts a plethora of diverse herbal formulas.

His approach to herbalism blends European folk influences mixed up with a bit of the 19th century eclectic and physiomedical vitalism which he tries to spice up with a bit of humor and discretionary irreverence, so as not to appear to be too serious about life. jim hosts the websites, herbcraft.org and herbcraft.podia.com, which lists his offering and conveys his thoughts of plants and herbalism.

By the way, jim spells his name in all lower cases. He is very particular about this. If you’ve ever wondered about the lack of capitalization, it’s this: it’s simply because the dots over the j and the i just looks super cool together.

Hey, jim!

jim mcdonald:

Hi Rosalee! How are you?

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I’m very good. I’m very excited to be here with you. I was just reflecting how this came to be because you are here for the third time.

jim mcdonald:

Third time.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Third time on the podcast. You’re also a frequent guest on—as a guest instructor for my various courses. That’s because you are not only my teacher, but you’re also my friend. I often get a kick out of hanging out with you, but this time it’s funny because you just messaged me out of the blue.

jim mcdonald:

I did.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Like all your messages are, and you said, “Hey, we should do a really long mullein podcast.” I was like, “That’s cool. jim is mullin’ over mullein.” See that? I did a thing that you do.

jim mcdonald:

Very good. I might add… really, like, really long, but it might have been capitalized.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

That was funny because I was like, “Sure, jim. My show is your show. You can do whatever you want on my show,” although, I actually… You are one person I would not want to say that to, but you know…

jim mcdonald:

This is now recording?

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Let’s keep it G rated. Let’s put some boundaries on that, jim.

jim mcdonald:

At 10:36, Herbs with Rosalee is now “Herbs with Rosalee Under the Auspices of jim,” right? 

Rosalee de la Forêt:

That could go really well or badly. We’d have to find out. Anyway, I was like, “Sure, jim. You can do mullein,” and then you reiterated after that. “Can it be really long so that we can really cover everything mullein?” I’m like, “Sure, jim, but isn’t mullein just a simple weed? Isn’t it just like a beginner’s herb? Aren’t there sexier herbs you could talk about? I mean mullein? ”

jim mcdonald:

What could be sexier than mullein though? The idea of beginner’s herb I understand where it comes from. The reason people will talk about mullein and use the phrase it’s a “beginner’s herb,” what they really mean is it’s a fairly easy herb to identify. It’s pretty recognizable. Most people can figure it out although I would like to get into some significant considerations with identification. It’s really safe and gentle. It’s hard to do harm with mullein, so for beginning herbalists, mullein is a great herb to learn about because it’s gentle. It’s very effective and virtuous and pretty easy to identify. I’ve never thought about an animal being a beginner’s animal. I’ve never thought about a person being like a beginner’s person. 

Rosalee de la Forêt:

[Crosstalk] graduate to the next person.

jim mcdonald:

You’re just starting out being alive, maybe you should start knowing beginner’s people, and then after you get to gain some life experience, you could move on to intermediate people. Maybe if you really study hard at life and being alive and having relationships, you can learn about advanced people. I think that because of way that a lot of people learn through conventional educational systems, which may vary where you’re at if you’re listening to this, but here in North America, we might take this idea of beginner, intermediate and advanced, and be less effective and more effective, or these things are stronger or the advanced things work better. That is not a great way to think because what could be more virtuous than mullein?

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I don’t know, but we’re about to find out.

jim mcdonald:

There are other very virtuous things, but I think mullein is a plant that I just keep learning about all the time. I learn something new. I think of something myself. Someone else tells me something about mullein and yet, probably the most common things that you’ll find about it, the basics that everyone says and everyone agrees on is if you have a cough, you can take mullein in some form or another. If you have an ear ache or an ear infection, you can make some mullein flower oil, maybe mix it with garlic and use that. Those things are both true, but there’s a lot more nuance. There’s a lot more things to discover about it.

Maybe a great place to start is although—because mullein is like a silvery green, gray color and very fuzzy and when the stalk grows up, it can be 5 feet tall or 6 feet tall or 8 feet tall or 10 feet tall, depending on the growing conditions and maybe the species. It can branch out and have multiple flower stalks, so it’s an easy thing. People will be like, “I saw it on the side of the expressway,” or “I saw it in an old field,” or “It popped up in my yard. What is that thing because it really stands out?” It’s hard not to notice when it’s taller than you are.

I still feel like what I frequently hear people will say is, “Does it have fuzzy leaves that are soft?” because that would be a way to identify mullein and that would not be a way—I mean, that would be a way, a part of a way to identify mullein, but you could also identify other plants that aren’t mullein. That can confuse them. Maybe one of the most common things that people confuse with mullein is a plant called “lamb’s ears,” which is a Stachys byzantina. It’s in the mint family. When they’re little, it’s got fuzzy leaves that are kind of the same color. They will never get as big as mullein leaves can get, but sometimes you have a really small mullein plant and a really small lamb’s ears plant. I could see it making that confusion. If you look at the lamb’s ears plant, the hairs on that are longer. If you had a little, teeny brush, maybe if you have a child that has dolls and you wonder why you have little, teeny household objects all over. You might have a little, teeny brush, if you had a lamb’s ears plant, you could brush it. I’m doing a little squiggly, brushing motion. You can see the hairs on the lamb’s ears get curvy because they’re longer. You’ll not see that on the mullein. The lamb’s ears is long enough to be hairy and to see a pattern. The mullein is mostly just fuzzy. The fuzz isn’t long enough that you’re going to see squiggles if you run your fingers quickly across it. At least nothing very noticeable.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I love the botanical description.

jim mcdonald:

Part of my other job is I teach really fine detail botany. If some people use a loop, I use a little doll hairbrush to make botanical distinctions. Probably the most concerning thing, and this is where mullein is fairly easy to identify for most people, but a very concerning misidentification that happens is people will see Digitalis or foxglove before it has put up a stalk. It can actually form a basal rosette with alternating leaves like mullein has. It’s not quite the same degree of fuzzy, but I’ve seen some pictures. I’ve been around some foxglove that is just starting. I look at it and I can see how someone could see this basal clump of foxglove maybe in the late winter or early spring and think that that’s mullein. The reason that that’s incredibly problematic is because foxglove is a very dangerous plant. It is significantly poisonous and not only can one single cup of tea kill someone, but one single cup of tea has killed people. The most common plants that foxglove is misidentified as is comfrey, although comfrey has smooth edges or leaf margins. Although mullein is fuzzier, it looks a little bit less like mullein than it does like comfrey, people still do make that mistake. Actually, in the past two months, I’ve seen people posting pictures of foxglove who live farther south saying, “Is this mullein? I want to gather it,” and then I have to be commenting with a sense of like, “No, no, no, no, no!” I actually post where someone says, “Yes, it is!” or “No, but it’s comfrey.”

That would be a very dangerous mistake to make. Don’t just look at something and say—general principle in herbalism or foraging  or wildcrafting or gathering stuff that grows outside is never pick anything to ingest or rub on your body without really being confident what it is, although we do not live surrounded by teeming poisonous plants, they are there. They can be around.

One of the things I’ve said with foxglove vs. mullein or vs. comfrey, that unless you are visiting the home of an herbalist or someone who is in the permaculture, in the case of comfrey, if it’s behind the border up against someone’s house mixed in with their other shrubbery and ornamental plants, it’s probably not comfrey. It’s probably not going to be mullein. People plant foxglove because it has really beautiful flowers as an ornamental plant. That’s just something you should have your heads-up on. Although mullein, the edges of the leaves, will have some subtle but present serrations that are slightly rounded, the rounded, nubby teeth of foxglove are a lot more distinct.

If you’re gathering wild plants out in the area that you live at, especially if you’re visiting a new place, you maybe don’t know. For example, when I was in Washington State near Bellingham, there was foxglove growing wild all over the place. Completely different than it would be by me, but I could see how someone who lives where I live could go out to that area and be like, “It can’t be foxglove. It’s growing wild everywhere.” They are in a different place. 

A great strategy is that if you’re learning to collect plants in the wild, don’t only learn how to identify the plants you wanted to pick. Learn about the poisonous or toxic plants that live where you live and learn how to identify those, so that you’re not only thinking, “I’m sure that this is the plant that I want to gather” but also, “I’m sure it’s not one of the poisonous plants that might be in my area.” That’s pretty important.

So, mullein, mullein, mullein—the first place to start thinking of mullein is probably thinking about mullein leaves because they’re the most commonly used. I happen to have for the people who are watching this—look, it’s a nice tuft of really pretty, fuzzy mullein leaves that I have gathered. They’re pretty and fuzzy and soft and everything. People will often refer to them as kind of velvety. One of the folk names for mullein is “quaker rouge” and the reason it’s called quaker rouge or so the oft repeated story goes, is that they’re quakers. They’re not supposed to wear makeup. Because people who have cultural rules usually find ways to circumvent them. It just seems like a pattern in the world, doesn’t it? There are rules. We could probably think creatively a way to get around that.

A way that you could get rosy cheeks would be to rub mullein on your cheeks. Why would that make them rosy? It’s because those fuzzy hairs feel soft, but if you really rub them on to your skin and if you have more sensitive skin, or you are just a more constitutionally sensitive, reactive person, they’re irritating the skin and that brings blood flow into the area and that makes your cheeks rosy or blush-looking or rougey. If you start thinking about that and you think, “This hair is irritating,” and then you think of the other thing that people say about mullein, which is that it is “herbal toilet paper” or “cowboy toilet paper” or whatever toilet paper, and you can use that. There’s a lot of people who have what I think is commonly referred to in medical literature as “anuses of steel.” They could probably rub anything on their butt if they needed to after they pooped, and it wouldn’t irritate them. There are other people that I have met who’ve told me their stories, who were out backpacking or something and then they’re like, “Look! It’s nature’s toilet paper! It’s a big mullein leaf and it seems soft and everything,” and then they use it. Maybe you use the underside. The underside leaves give it some texture, in addition to the seeming softness and then it does a good job, but then you start hiking and then all of a sudden—again, there’s a visual here. If you’re just listening, you can—hold on. No, I’m not going to do it.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

This is why I said you can’t do anything on the show. I knew I needed boundaries.

jim mcdonald:

Actually, I’m not going to do that. Imagine these are your cheeks. Imagine right in between them is all irritated and inflamed. As you’re continuing to backpack as this person was, that is the sound of skin rubbing on skin as you walk and that can be a bummer. For this person, it was a bummer. My suggestion is if you refer to mullein as like nature’s toilet paper or whatever kind of toilet paper you’ve read that it’s called, at least throw in a caveat that before you do that, maybe try rubbing it on the inside of your elbow or some other part of your skin that’s a little bit more sensitive, so you can see how you react to it before the way you react to it is in your crotch. Most people I’ve talked to, they don’t like any kind of skin inflammation is not their favorite, but crotch inflammation is probably higher on the list of things they would like to avoid.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I think I could agree with that. I would add in here, jim, that there could be other toilet paper uses. There’s one thing to be really cleaning out your anus, but there’s another one of just sometimes people have female anatomy, just a need a little pat and dry after peeing and that works quite well with mullein because it’s not irritating, rubbing-it-in-situation. I just want to mention that that it could work in that situation. It could be varying degrees of how you use this. 

jim mcdonald:

I have been told by people who have done that that they’ve had adverse reactions to it.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Oh, okay.

jim mcdonald:

I cannot say—and it’s one of the things I don’t know because I don’t really keep track. I don’t have a little clicker. I’m just not organized enough.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Levels of sensitivity. I will say I’ve done that a hundred times without a problem, so I feel very confident in my personal use in that situation. It’s good to know that others are more sensitive, because you don’t want to be the person that recommends something that leads down this road of discomfort.

jim mcdonald:

People will remember where they heard about it from. It’s just something to be mindful about. Again, assess your level of sensitivity before trying that out. A lot of people, probably the majority of people haven’t had a bad reaction to it, but some people will, and that some person could be you or it could be your partner or your aunt or your mom, and then that adds complexity to the relationship.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Really curious where this conversation is going to go. So far, we’ve covered this idea around does a beginner herb exist? Then we talked about botanical ID and now we are talking about this other—this is going to be great. We’re just getting started, jim. We’re just getting started.

jim mcdonald:

We’re talking about mullein leaves. The thing that most people come to is mullein leaves are good for coughing. If you’re coughing, mullein leaves are good for coughing. If you are new to herbalism, if you’re a beginning herbalist, this is the way that you generally learn about herbs. You either come from two directions. One direction is “I have a problem and what are the names of plants that are good for that problem that I can try because I have that problem?” The other is, “I learned a plant. What are the problems that this plant is good for?” With mullein, the plant is mullein and one of the things that it’s good for, mullein leaf, and one of the things that it’s good for is coughs. Or the problem is coughs and one of the really good things is mullein leaf.

You and I, Rosalee, because we have spent a lot of time nerding on in herbalism, we want to be like, “But there are things called ‘specific indications.’ There are qualities of plants. What is good for one type of cough might not be good or might even be aggravating for another kind of cough.” When I think about coughs, the three biggest distinctions I make are: Are the respiratory tissues or is the mucous drier? Or is it damper and a little bit more wet? Or is the cough spasmodic? You’re getting into spasmodic coughing.

If I wanted to say that mullein has specific indications it seems to be because it’s mildly demulcent. It’s not going to be super slimy and moistening. It’s mildly demulcent. It’s a little bit better for drier coughs and it’s also a great relaxant. If I had to think of a kind of cough, it just hollers mullein out of me. It’ll be a cough that sounds like (makes coughing sounds). It’s got that dry wheeziness to it, the (makes sound) sound in it, if I hear that I always think, “Mullein!” It’s like you don’t cough once or twice. You can cough and then you cough. Those spasms of the coughing, they could be actually pretty hard and leave your lungs and your chest hurting from how hard the coughing feels. That would be very specific for mullein, but because mullein is a pretty gentle herb and because it’s only mildly moistening, it’s probably unlikely to aggravate other types of coughs.

If I were to think about a very moistening herb like maybe marshmallow cold infusion that’s really super goopy, yeah,  great for drier coughs. If someone had a really damp cough, that is not what I would use. They don’t need goop. If their lungs already wet and goopy on the inside, they don’t need goop to make them more moist. That’s not what’s needed. Because mullein is mildly and gently moistening, most people, even if they had a damper cough, could still use mullein. It might not be quite specifically indicated just for a drier cough, but if they mixed it with anything aromatic that could be something like Angelica or it could be something like ground ivy, thyme, sage or New England aster, then that aromatic quality would offset any of the moistening nature just make it fine to use. Specifically by itself, I think about more drier, spasmodic coughs with wheeziness, especially if you’re coughing spasm, it leaves your chest hurting after that.

I feel very good about that. I could make a tea with that or I could make a tincture with that. I could make a tea and then reduce it or just add other stuff and then add honey or sugar, make a syrup with it. That would be grand. I could make… I haven’t, but I could make a glycerite with mullein.

Coming back to those fuzzy hairs, for some people, those fuzzy hairs, if they are sitting at the bottom of the cup of tea—if you’re just listening, I’m holding up a cup of tea right now—or they are in a tincture bottle and they are sitting down at the tincture bottle where when you squeeze the bulb, it pulls from the bottom of the tincture bottle and you have most of the leaves there, and then you can squirt it in the back of your throat. Those fuzzy hairs could be irritating, so mullein is one of the small number of herbs that when I make a preparation of it, I will pour it through a paper coffee filter. Not because most people need it, but because it’s really not that hard to do. If you do that then no one will be aggravated by it. No one will be bothered by those hairs.

I was going to say earlier that I was in probably thousands of walks and because I’ve talked about mullein, pretty much a half or a third of the walks that I’ve done because it’s always around an area that I live, I’ve heard lots of stories that people have told me, “I went backpacking. That’s where that story came from,” or “I made a tea. After I drank it, I felt like I was having allergic reaction because my throat felt all irritated and like it was closing up.” It wasn’t that they were having allergic reaction. It’s that they just had lots of little mullein hairs in the back of their throat, but it freaked them out. That doesn’t need to happen if we can pour something through a coffee filter then that’s pretty good because it won’t happen to people. 

Another thing that is commonly said about mullein is the great thing about mullein or the not great thing, depending on your proclivities, is you can just smoke it. You don’t have to make a tea. You don’t have to make a tincture. You can just take the leaves and you can smoke them. This is true. This is a traditional use. Mullein smoked from the burned herb does act as a pretty awesome respiratory relaxant and anti-spasmodic, but it does change the energetics, the indications of it, because as soon as you take an herb like mullein, which I would consider in most of its forms is like neutral to slightly cooling and slightly moistening in nature, if you light it on fire and you inhale the burning embers of it, it’s hot because you put it on fire. It’s dry because you lit it on fire and you’re inhaling it. If anyone has ever maybe used something like kitty litter or wood ash to clean up a spill, you had some kind of very dry thing and you poured it on something wet, what that smoke will do, what that inhaled ash will do is it will absorb moisture from the mucus or from the tissues into itself. If you have a damper cough then that makes sense, if you have a really dry cough that could be aggravating.

There are two ways to lessen the aggravation. One is to just use mullein smoke for damper coughs because that’s what it’s more indicated for. Another is, rather than rolling up a mullein joint or rather than—we are also doing something visual—getting your really cool wizard pipe and—where’s my lighter? Here we go. Getting your cool wizard pipe and being like, taking a big hit of mullein. You don’t need to take big tokes of mullein. You could find one of these little Pacman style tea balls. Maybe that you got early in your interest in herbalism before you realize it’s way too small to hold any useful quantity of herb. You put some mullein inside of it, and then you take a lighter and flame the bottom of it until it starts smoking, and then you inhale the wisps of smoke. If you have a whole dried mullein leaf, you can light the end of the mullein leaf, shake it and inhale those wisps of smoke. Those wisps of smoke can manifest the relaxant effect that it has without there being too much smoke that it’s likely to aggravate someone who might have a drier cough or drier mucus or drier respiratory tissues. It’s a pretty nice way to get around that.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I thought those little tea ball infusers were absolutely useless. This is a new tip for me.

jim mcdonald:

I’ve used broken tea balls where you’re holding one end of the slightly larger, but still too small broken tea ball. Sometimes it gets hot.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I was about to say that sounds problematic.

jim mcdonald:

You need pliers. This is nice because it keeps the ash in, too, and you can wave it around to contain it. If you had charcoal rounds and you wanted to light one of those and then wait for… it does this cool sparking thing for a little bit, but then you wait for however long it takes to fully get burned. You could just drop little dried mullein leaves on there, but I don’t do that most of the time. Most of the time I use this or I just have a leaf or something.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I feel like there must be someone out there who is saying, “But jim, isn’t smoke inhalation bad? How is that supporting our lungs?”

jim mcdonald:

If you have a lot of damp mucus in your lungs, a part of the reason it’s hard to expectorate is because it’s just too wet. It doesn’t have enough body. It doesn’t have enough substance. When you have the reflexive cough, which is a controlled spasm in design to help you expectorate and get stuff out of your lungs, that ash will give more body to that mucus and allow you to more effectively cough it up.

I also think—and this is just my opinion and not like a truth—the whole idea that smoking anything is inherently bad is a cultural belief, because that is certainly not true of a lot of different cultures in the planet. What we have—I’m saying “we” like North American white guy raised in a mostly North American white culture—we’ve largely looked at the abusive tobacco is a model for what smoking is and how to think about smoking, and then apply that to everything. If you’re going to say any smoke is irritating to the lungs, I would say plants that you’re drinking of that are aromatic that are acting as diuretics or acting as diuretics by irritating your kidneys, your urinary tissues and causing you to release more urine, so should we avoid those too?

Wisps of smoke shouldn’t be a problem. There’s an amazing herbalist. One of the people that I’ve met a long time ago and isn’t very active in the wider herbal world named, Joyce Wardwell. She’s an herbalist from Northern Michigan. She had once told me that inhaled wisps of mullein smoke is a great anti-spasmodic for treating pertussis or whooping cough. I learned that from her and because she’s always been a very reliable source of information, I started making that recommendation to people. Nothing works all the time, but the general feedback I got from people was either, “That worked pretty good” or “Wow! That was amazing,” in terms of just wisps of smoke.

Another thing is if we’re thinking about whooping cough, it’s usually small kids that get that. Probably when we’re getting into talking about smoking herbs, don’t fill up your bowl with mullein leaves and stick it into your infant’s mouth and like, “Here, take a hit.”

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Good tip.

jim mcdonald:

That might not be the best strategy. That wouldn’t be my recommendation.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Glad we have this on record.

jim mcdonald:

Mullein tea, tincture, syrup, glycerite. Have you ever made a vinegar out of mullein?

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I can’t say that I have.

jim mcdonald:

Have you made a glycerite out of mullein?

Rosalee de la Forêt:

No. 

jim mcdonald:

I haven’t made those two things yet.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I’d be curious. This is not a truth. This is just my pondering. Not all herbs are great in glycerin. Glycerin doesn’t extract—I don’t know. Something about mullein leaf and glycerin. I’d be curious if that was an effective preparation.

jim mcdonald:

It seems like that would be a harder one to strain the fuzzy hair out of. If you pour the glycerin into your coffee filter, you would just sit there and…

Rosalee de la Forêt:

If somebody has done that, post in the comments. Let us know your experience. I’d be curious about that one.

jim mcdonald:

Wait for it to drip. I would think about those forms as being neutral to cooling, not super cooling. Not like watermelon or cucumber, but neutral to cooling in temperature and relaxant, anti-spasmodic in nature. If you’re smoking it, it’s going to be hotter. Again, fire, drier again, fire. So, different indications for using it for cough, but still it’s a really great herb to use for cough. It’s accessible to a lot of people. It’s very safe. All of the herbal literature about safety for this plant is like, “side effects: none known,” “contraindications: none known,” “drug interactions: none known.” I have seen people make reference to mullein leaf—we’re still talking about mullein leaf and not mullein in general, but mullein leaf specifically—it’s contraindicated for pregnancy and lactation. I think that that comes from—this is me saying this. I know this is a charged topic. I think that comes from we don’t know.

To my knowledge, there aren’t studies of mullein leaf, and so what people do when there are not studies, they’re like because we don’t have studies on something then we’re probably never going to do studies on. We can’t show that it’s safe, so it’s seen as dangerous. If you do that, that will save you from any potential dangers. But also, if you were to say if you don’t know a person, just assume that they’re dangerous and avoid them because if you do that you’ll always be safe even though you’ll also miss out on a lot of things that might be helpful. Personally, I have never seen anything that actually calls into question the safety of mullein in pregnancy and lactation.

The only safety concern I can think of with mullein is not even really a safety concern, but some people are sensitive to the fuzzy hairs and they can be irritating. They can get a minor transient inflammation from that, but largely, mullein leaf is very safe for all kinds of respiratory functions. The leaves were also traditionally used by eclectics and physiomedicalists and other people who didn’t write stuff down for me to read later, as a lymphatic herb.

However, when I think about using mullein as a lymphatic, I’m more inclined to think about mullein flowers. I’ve got a little jar of mullein flower oil here. I don’t have any dried flowers around. If you’re gathering mullein flowers from the most common species of mullein that I know grows in North America, Verbascum thapsus, you either need to keep coming back to the same stand over the course of days to individually pick out the flowers from them, or you need a lot of plants if you’re going to go and pick flowers in one day, because this is a plant that even though it has a lot of flowers, they don’t all flower at the same time. You might have one that has got 10 or 12 flowers you can get out of the big, long flower stalk. You could pick them all because when you pull the flowers out, you’re only pulling the petals out. You’re not actually removing its ability to produce seed. You can gather them. What I like to do, the big ethical consideration that I have with mullein flowers is I look inside the flowers and I look to see whether there’s a little shiny black beetle that’s in them sometimes. If the beetle is in there first, I’ll leave that one because it seems rude to me to be like, “I’m going to squeeze you and pull you out of the plant and throw you on the ground.” I don’t do that.

If you have the ability to grow mullein, which is really easy, you can grow a species called “Greek mullein” or Verbascum olympicum. That one produces so many flowers and not only the flower is bigger, but it just flowers and flowers and flowers and flowers and flowers and flowers and flowers and flowers and flowers and flowers. It’s pretty astounding. Any mullein flower has this unique property because they’re also a little bit fuzzy. The fuzz on mullein leaves and mullein flowers acts to insulate them and it even acts to preserve them. You can find mullein flowers that might have fallen off of the flowering stalk and landed and got caught in the leaves days ago and they still look perfect. I always look for those. I’ll look on the ground and provided they’re clean and they don’t look like wilted or discolored, I will gather those too. The Greek mullein, the Verbascum olympicum, really just pretty and has tons of flowers. If maybe you’re an herbalist and you really want to be able to make your oil and not have it be so tedious, you could try growing that. It’s a biennial, so it will take a year to be a basal rosette, the second year to produce flowers, but then there will be a lot of flowers.

The flowers are maybe more specifically lymphatic or at least, I find them to be in the leaves. They also have this anti-inflammatory and pain relieving quality. Most commonly, people infuse them into oils and then if someone has an ear infection, they will take the oil often mixed with garlic oil, and drop it or swab it inside the ear. I think that garlic is acting as an antimicrobial in that situation, more specifically, fighting the infection. The mullein flower helps with the fluid congestion, so the congested lymphatic fluids in the ear and with the inflammation end as a topical pain reliever, so it’s helping more with the discomfort. I don’t think about garlic as really being specific to help with the pain of an ear infection. That’s more what the mullein is doing.

A lot of people will stop there, but I’ve also made and really loved mullein flower tincture. It’s got this color and flavor that’s a lot more deep golden yellow when you make it. It tastes significantly different than the leaves taste. I will use that internally for lymphatic glands that are swollen and painful tender to the touch. We’ve got lymphatic glands all throughout our body, but there are certain places that have more than others. Although the people listening can hear me, you can go watch the video, I’m going to choose to show pretend that the lymphatic glands under my chin and by my neck are swollen and not other lymphatic glands which might also be swollen, tender and so are sensitive. You could take it internally if under your jaw by your ears you’re getting swollen glands when you’re sick and it feels like tender to the touch and more sensitive.

You can also even apply the tincture topically to have a similar effect to what the oil will do because sometimes, although oils are great, oils stain your clothing. You might have something going on and just an oil isn’t the right thing to do at that time, you can just apply the tincture. That will be helpful. I’ve even used the tincture where I’ll dip a cotton swab in it and then rub the inside of the ear when that seems like—I don’t want oiliness in the ear. Sometimes I work with people that they’ve got an ear thing going on that’s mucousy. They’re overproducing a lot of fluid and the oil just adds to that and they don’t like the way it feels, I’d mix mullein flower with red root tincture, which is astringent and also a pretty wonderful lymphatic, and swab that in the ear. If you’re one of those people that are terrified of cotton swabs, you don’t need to do that. I feel like I can handle a cotton swab and feel confident with it, but I’ve met people and they’re like, “Oh, that’s so dangerous.” Not dangerous in my book.

Mullein flower’s lymphatic qualities for swollen, tender, painful lymph glands is pretty spectacular.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

How about as a tea? You mentioned tincture.

jim mcdonald:

I’ve never made mullein flower as a tea because they’re pretty hard one. You know dried herbs. Even if you’re growing the Greek mullein and you’re getting a lot of flowers. You have a lot and after they fully dry out, they shrink a lot. They shrink considerably. Maybe a consideration when we’re talking about infusing something very moist like mullein flower in oil, is some people will make an infused oil of a very moist fresh herb like mullein flower or violet or calendula or dandelion flowers, and then their oil go off because the water content in that oil doesn’t get separated from the oil when they’re finished, and then it goes off because the oil and the water and maybe a little residual bits of plant material just make things spoil or cause the oil to go off. Ways you can get around that is you could thoroughly dry your mullein flowers or you could mostly dry your mullein flowers, so it’s got a little bit of moisture in there but not a whole lot. Even then, I would say if you’re just doing the thing we are putting mullein flowers in a jar of oil and not adding heat to it and allowing the moisture to escape, then that’s problematic. The oil can go off.

What I like to do is put the oil in the flowers in a double boiler and then get it to just a low steam depending on your stove and what you have access to. Mine has a little warm burner on it. It’s maybe the only saving grace of having an electric stove. The warm burner will keep the oil within a range between a 100 and 120 something. So, you got the pot with the water and then a pot with oil and flowers in it, leave that uncovered. The water in the flowers will evaporate out of the oil if you leave it there. I tend to do oils on the stove for days instead of hours, which isn’t what most people do, but after a few days you can put the lid on it maybe overnight or for a few hours and lift it up. If you still see condensation on the inside of the lid, leave the lid off longer. When you put that lid on and lift it up and there’s not really any condensation there, that means that most of the oil—most of the water is out of your oil.

A tip I learned from Henriette Kress in Helsinki, Finland is after you pour your oil through a strainer and not so much for the hairs, but just in general like if you want your oils to last as long as they possibly can if you pour them through a paper filter, so there’s not little bits of plant material floating in them for stuff to grow on, and then you let it sit in a jar on your counter for a week. Any water, teeny little bits of water that’s floating around suspended in the oil will settle down to the bottom and then you can carefully decant that off to get a really clear, perfect golden yellow oil. If though you’re only making small quantities of mullein oil and if you’re like, “I think there might still be water in that,” you can just put it in a jar in your fridge. It will freeze up to a semi-solid, buttery consistency. When you want to use it, you can just run it under some hot water and then use it, and then stick it back in your fridge. You don’t have to stress so much about getting every last drop of water out of your oil.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Those are really fantastic oil tips that you’re giving here. I know how fantastic they are because I feel like they were hard won. I was not taught these tricks Day One Herbalism. They were learned over time. They’re important. People might not realize how important they are unless you’ve been doing it for a while and you’re like, “Oh, that’s how you get around that workaround,” “Oh, that’s how the oils don’t go rancid.”

jim mcdonald:

Pouring your oils into clean jars also helps a lot. I think that what it takes to really get nerdy about oil preservation is having a quart mason jar or a quart Boston round jar of oil go bad on you and then being like, “Nooooo!” and that sinking feeling that you have of like, “Ahhh!” I can’t go back and gather those flowers again because it’s four weeks later or six months later or something, and that was much oil and that was much flowers. It took me so long to pick all those mullein flowers. I really love picking mullein flowers. It’s one of my favorite things to do.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I do too. I really do. 

jim mcdonald:

Practically though, I think about nothing really is wonderfully meditative and peaceful when I’m spending time with the mullein than picking the flowers one by one. You might be like, “I have to be somewhere” or “My children are getting hungry.” There’s just a time consideration and that’s where the Greek mullein can really come into being super helpful for that. Someone once said to me, “Are you sure that the Greek mullein flowers work as well as the Verbascum thapsus?” I think from using them, yes. I think that there are a lot of companies like Herb Pharm. The first time I saw that plant was at the United Plant Savers Botanical Sanctuary.  Right next to that piece of land was Paul Strauss’ Equinox Botanicals and that was what he used to make all of his stuff. I was like, “Wow! I‘ve never seen so many flowers on mullein like that. That’s amazing!” He was like, “That’s the Greek mullein.”

There’s also a Verbascum densiflorum. Densi something with an “fl” that if you type it into Google, it will probably find the right one for you. That’s what I feel confident saying right now. I feel like Verbascum densiflorum and Verbascum thapsus and Verbascum olympicum all seem broadly interchangeable roots, leaves and flowers. Verbascum blattaria or moth mullein – that plant doesn’t really feel quite the same to me. I think that it might have some of the lymphatic qualities, but it feels a little bit more figworty to me as a Scrophulariaceae plant. I used a big botany word there. 

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Good job.

jim mcdonald:

Do you use mullein? Other than your stuff, do you have mullein flower stuff to tell? 

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I wish that I had made it more as a tea. I have made it somewhat as a tea because somebody gifted me a bunch of dried mullein. I tried it as a tea, but I was just trying it to experience it and I don’t know that I walked away with any wows or anything. It does make a beautiful, same yellow tea that comes out. If you did happen to have a whole bunch, which again is hard to do, but if you’re growing lots of olympicum, I bet it would be a really good bath herb. It’s kind of like nourishing lymphatic [crosstalk] bath with it. That would be my guess.

jim mcdonald:

There’s a quality that is currently something that I’m pondering and speculating about. I love speculative herbalism. I think that speculative herbalism is really important. The most important thing about speculative herbalism is that you announce that it’s speculative. That it’s something that you’re thinking and wondering about and playing around with, and not something that’s true because I think that there’s people that are speculating about stuff. It might be true or it might not, but they’re presenting it as, “This is a thing that is.”

I have noticed some people have told me, “The mullein flower. Wow! That’s a powerful nervine,” and I’ve been like, “Really?” After the third person who told me that, I went and took some, and I’m not really feeling that. It takes a certain kind of person. What I started doing is—because sometimes someone tells you that something did something to them. That’s an idiosyncratic, personal thing I did to them. After a few people tell you and then you try it out and it doesn’t do the same thing to you, I just started wondering about it. I’m wondering what is the same about these people? What am I seeing that’s the same? Something like a dry, damp thing. It seems like a hot cold thing. It really is not like a tense lax thing. Then it’s like, “You know what? They’re all a little bit dispositionally what we might either refer to as a more choleric, temperamented person or a more pitta doshad person, or in the much more assessable modern vernacular, a more Type A person. All the people that I can think of who told me that they felt a nervine effect from it had this more Type A “do go go do” sort of disposition. I don’t know how we find people like that to have them try it out and see whether it works. It would be like a big search to find someone with that inclination. I don’t know.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I don’t know either. I don’t know anyone.

jim mcdonald:

It would be worth looking at. That’s what I want in order for that to go from a speculation and like, “I think I see this pattern.” It’s not like there’s been a hundred people that I notice had this pattern.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I think a conference to get 20 people who self-identify with having more strongly sanguine traits, choleric, phlegmatic, melancholic, etc. and try different things, and see the reactions from the groups. That would be-

jim mcdonald:

That would be super fun. That makes you think-

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I wonder if there’s any herb fairs that we’re going to where we might be able to do that.

jim mcdonald:

That would be great. Nothing is better than having herb people just take stuff and see what happens. It’s like the root of all good herbalism. Those are probably my mullein flower inclinations--my understanding of how to use them. I rarely see people talk about mullein flower for anything other than ear problems. I think that the lymphatic thing, so it’s painful, sensitive, swollen, congested, lymphatic is a great indication for it. It’s a cool tincture to have. There’s something about it. I’m holding up some mullein flower tincture. Something about it is just really pretty wonderful. It tastes good and it makes me happy. I guess part of the reason it makes me happy is when I take it, I think about picking the flowers. That aspect of it is connected for me. Maybe that’s just my own personal projection on to it, but it’s also my relationship with it.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I have that with St. John’s wort. I cannot separate St. John’s wort medicine from the joy of growing, interacting and harvesting St. John’s wort. It’s all interconnected.

jim mcdonald:

I think that that’s such an important part of herbalism. I don’t want to be—that’s the thing that people do that I kind of don’t want to perpetuate, which is this kind of herbalist is cooler or better than another kind of herbalist. There are people that I know that are awesome plant people who love plants and love herbs. They do Ayurvedic medicine or Traditional Chinese Medicine. They get their herbs in tea capsules or in formulas that are already made or as powders from another country and everything and they don’t have a, “I know this plant in the ground,” relationship with them. That’s fine and that’s awesome and that’s not the only way to have authentic herbalism.

For me, knowing the plants add so much to how I understand them and how I share them with people. I just can’t imagine. There are some plants that I use that I don’t know as plants in the ground, but most of the plants I use are plants that I have relationships with the plant and that’s just pretty cool.

The part of mullein that is maybe lesser used and lesser known is using mullein root. If I think about who talks about using mullein root, Michael Moore used to teach. Michael Moore is the herbalist and not the movie guy, if you’re out there thinking, “Michael Moore the movie guy?” No. Michael Moore the herbalist who I don’t hear talked about as much. If you don’t know who Michael Moore is, get Medicinal Plants of the Pacific West and start reading that book and you’ll be like, “This guy is awesome!” because he is really insightful and his writing was amazing. He got concision. Is concision a word? He didn’t have pages and pages and pages on every single plant, but he had a little-

Rosalee de la Forêt:

There was character for each one.

jim mcdonald:

He really-

Rosalee de la Forêt:

He was one of the first people to write the way he speaks too. He was informal. He has this just incredible balance between this informal way of sharing information and then yet sharing this very advanced—I don’t know if “advanced” is the right word, but “intricate” would be a better word, I guess.

jim mcdonald:

Michael Moore taught about using mullein for a lot of bladder and urine issues. One of the things I know he specifically said or wrote was that mullein was a strengthening bladder tonic that help to strengthen the trigone sphincter at the base of the bladder. I have no idea where that came from other than Michael. I’ve never seen that indication anywhere. The trigone sphincter part is really precise. I’m inclined to think that he came up with that idea specific to that sphincter. I wonder and I don’t know, maybe some of his students, of which there are a lot, might know where he got that, whether he came up with that indication himself. I know that Michael had learned a lot from indigenous people and people in Mexico and that tradition. He’s got a book called Los Remedios, which is a lot of Southwestern, Mexican, indigenous and cultural herbalism. That indication may have come from one of those traditions. I don’t really know, but it is really pretty good for specifically people that have maybe stress incontinence.

When I think about the other stress incontinence herbs, the two herbs that I use the most—the most important thing for stress incontinence and that’s you cough or you sneeze or you laugh really hard or when you’re pogo sticking, you lose a little bit of urine. Pogo stick test. Sometimes I have clients, they tell me they have incontinence. It could be stress incontinence. It could spastic bladder syndrome. It could be overflow incontinence. They are functional incontinence. There are different kinds of incontinence. If I want to test that whether it’s stress incontinence, I used to be like, “Can you pogo stick down the hallway and back?”

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Fun.

jim mcdonald:

If they’re like, “Where’s your bathroom?” when they’re halfway down the hallway, I’m like, “Stress incontinence.” This is what clinical assessment technique I’ve developed over time.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Pogo stick technique.

jim mcdonald:

Probably the most common cause of stress incontinence that I know of is you had a baby and you use a lot of energy pushing a baby out of you and afterwards, you’ve got stress incontinence. Although the pogo stick thing is a little bit of a joke, I don’t want to wreck it for you there and you’re like, “Wait a minute. I was just looking up pogo sticks on Amazon to buy and write off as a business expense.” We, for awhile, had a trampoline in our backyard. When the kids were little and their friends would come over. Sometimes their friends would be like, “Mom, come on the trampoline thing. My parents, come on the trampoline thing.” The parent would be like, “No, I’m good. I’m okay.” I’ll be like, this is not a universal indicator, but it makes me wonder. It makes me be like this might be a thing.

The other things I use—this is where all the hopping pogo stick stuff started. The other thing I use for stress incontinence—the two herbs I use are agrimony, which is astringent, and staghorn—mostly staghorn or smooth sumac tops, the berry clusters and the upper stems and the leaves mixed together. Those are both distinctly astringent plants and that makes sense if something is a strengthening bladder tonic.

Mullein root, when you make a tea or an infusion or a decoction out of this, the flavor is intensely earthy. It’s mineraly. It’s got a hard flavor. The flavor we associate it with lost minerals. It does not feel decidedly astringent. Maybe it does feel like a drying thing, but it’s more from the minerals and not so much from the astringency. It just has the distinct tightening effect of that. There may be some variation. There are plants that I know here that don’t seem as astringent to me and then when I go in them at Southwest, I tried them out and they seem a little bit more astringent, so plants can vary based on where they’re growing. I always thought that that was pretty interesting that when I’m formulating with them, although I might mix together agrimony and staghorn, sumac tops and mullein root, if I only pick two of those, I would always do one of those and mullein root rather than agrimony and staghorn sumac together because I feel like those are two astringents. Astringent and mullein root—mullein root is doing something else. I don’t know what.

What else about bladder stuff? I learned maybe initially from 7Song about him referring to—that would be something—this is a maybe. I’m going on what I can pull out my memory here—is like a consideration when you’re working with someone with interstitial cystitis. Interstitial cystitis is a condition that’s like not irritable bowel syndrome, but irritable bladder syndrome. It’s like an autoimmune inflammatory condition affecting the bladder. There are a lot of things we need to think about. It wouldn’t be like, “You have that. Just take mullein root.” Mullein root is something that I will consider to be a part of a protocol to address that situation or that condition.

There is an herbalist in Northern California—I cannot pull out the specific town that she lives in—named Christa Sinadinos. Christa is a spectacular herbalist and has online really good PDFs, specifically something she wrote for Paul Bergner’s Medical Herbalism Journal. It is on the use of mullein root for different kinds of urinary situations. There are different recipes, base formulas for addressing prostate issues vs. stress incontinence vs. other different urinary things, things affecting the bladder. It’s really probably the most that I’ve ever seen written down in one place. I think it’s four pages long on mullein root for urinary issues, so that is a spectacular resource.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I think she talks about for childhood bedwetting too for that. 

jim mcdonald:

Yes. Lots of bladder issues. I also learned from—I think initially it probably came from David Winston about mullein root as a nerve pain remedy, and just generally, as a nerve remedy. Maybe the first way I heard about this is I was working with someone quite some time ago who had Lyme disease. At a certain point, they contacted me and said, “I started using the mullein root you told me about for Bell’s palsy because I got Bell’s palsy,” which is like a partial facial paralysis related to Lyme disease. It can happen for other reasons, but it does happen not uncommonly related to Lyme disease. He’s like, “You told me about it and I tried it out. It’s amazing! It really made a big difference. Things were getting worse and it turned things around and I’m really happy about it.” I was like, “I’ve never heard of that before. I don’t think you’ve heard about that from me because I don’t know about that.” At the time, I was using mullein root but not for that reason. I learned later that that’s something that David Winston teaches, so maybe he heard about it from David but also knew that I use mullein root and mixed up the two. Unless a part of me that I’m not consciously aware of came to him in a dream and said, “You should use mullein root for your Bell’s palsy because it helps with nerve issues.”

Having learned about that from this person and then finding out that David used it that way, I have used it for a lot of nerve pain that has a spinal involvement. Whether it’s upper cervical spinal involvement or thoracic spinal involvement or lower lumbar spinal involvement, I like using mullein root. I might use for sciatica. A lot of people would think for sciatica, St. John’s wort is really helpful. It’s been my experience that if you mix St. John’s wort with mullein root and use the two of them together, they work together better than either one does individually. That’s become a favorite pair of mine, although I will often add maybe another herb. The other herb could be Jamaican dogwood. It could be sometimes black cohosh. It could be white or yellow sweet clover or Melilotus species to address how that nerve pain is presenting, but the two of this together are pretty helpful. I’ve used it for facial neuralgia and trigeminal neuralgia, also with St. John’s wort. Again, maybe Jamaican dogwood to address that and found that it seems pretty helpful.

I haven’t noticed so much that when I don’t see some spinal connection, just for nerve hypersensitivity, mullein root seems to be the thing to go to. I could add it in, but my personal indication that I use for it is, is there some kind of spinal involvement? Is there subluxation? Is there a pinched nerve? Is there something that tells me where a root cause in this presentation is some kind of spinal misalignment and nerves are being pinched or impinged or whatever.

In those cases, I think it’s important to realize what is reasonable to think a plant can do vs. what it’s not. Sometimes plants do stuff that isn’t reasonable at all, which is really cool and everything. Other times, we might think—we can think about mullein with St. John’s wort for pinched nerve. If I was walking by, let’s just say the nerve is your foot. If I was walking by and as I walk by, I stepped on your foot and it hurt, and then they walked away. You’re like, “My foot hurts because jim stepped on it.” You could take something that would help with that pain. If I walked by and I stepped on your foot and I stopped. I started talking with you and I was still standing on your foot, you could still take something to help with that pain, but you need to get me to be off of your foot.

In a lot of cases where I see someone with spinal base nerve pain, I’m not just going to suggest herbs to them. I’m going to be like, “You also need to see someone that does some kind of body work because it’s not like you have a pinched nerve, ‘pinched,’ past tense. It is currently in the process of ‘pinch,’ present tense. You need to get the two, maybe vertebrae, from squeezing on that nerve.” That is probably going to take some kind of physical manipulation or stretching your body work or some kind of physical modality in addition to using just herbs. 

The area with mullein root that really sucked me in and led me to a deeper level of mullein love was one day, I woke up and—this is probably at least 20 years ago, maybe longer—I woke up and I was like—for people that cannot see right now because you’re just listening, you can watch the video, but also just imagine me kinked over to one side. I woke up and I couldn’t quite straighten up. My lower back was kinked down in my lumbar spine. I could cross correct my shoulders to make myself look kind of straight, but I had a little swiggle. It’s not like I had a cute onset scoliosis. It was just out of place. I was like, “This is irritating.” It wasn’t terribly painful. I wasn’t in agony, but I tried stretching. I did the cow cat thing. I went to my basement because I have a basement. I grabbed under the rafters, I hung myself from the rafters, holding on to it to let the weight of my body stretch. I tried different things. I just could not get my back to slip back into place. While I was doing this, in my head in a not quite verbal way that we sometimes get impressions in our head and we will say, “The plant is talking to me.” I was hearing, “Mullein root, mullein root, mullein root, mullein root, mullein root, mullein root.” After awhile, because nothing else was working, it was like, “Okay, fine.”

You might wonder why I, as an herbalist, will say “Okay, fine,” rather just being like, “I’m going to go and get some mullein root.” It was because at the time, there wasn’t any growing in my yard. It was also winter and there was snow on the ground. Mullein root, the leaves because they’re fuzzy, insulate. I knew where some grew, so I hobbled out to my car. I sat in my car all kinked to one side and I drove. I went out with a shovel and I stuck it into the mostly frozen ground where I could see a cluster. There wasn’t a ton of snow. There was enough snow. I could still see where the mullein rosettes were over winter. I chiseled out two mullein roots and I brought them back. I got them inside. I was able to rinse the dirt off of them. I chopped them up and I poured hot water over them and I let them steep just long enough to where they weren’t going to burn my mouth when I drink them. When I took a sip, I just slipped right back into place. Wow! That was cool! That one experience was not enough to go on and be like, “Mullein just does this,” but I started recommending it to other people like, “I don’t know if this is going to work, but I would try it out.”

After it worked for a couple other people, I’ve made some tincture of it. I should have this around. I only use the tea. I wasn’t even decocting it. I only use the tea. I made some tincture and I started having people try the tincture. I had a pretty significant back injury where I was changing my tire and the car fell off the jack and yanked me down and it hurt a lot. I was in a significant amount of pain and mullein root was not the only thing that I used, but it was a big part of what I used.

At the time I was picking it, the impression that I got was that the mullein is biennial. The first year is just the basal rosette. The second year it puts up a stalk, goes to flower, goes to seed and then dies. It’s done with its life cycle. Because of this, I want to think about gathering the root in the fall of the first year or through the spring of the second year. When it starts to put up a stalk, once the stalk gets to a certain point, the reason the stalk is getting to a certain point is it’s using up the stored food that was in the root. So, I like to gather between the fall of the first and the spring of the second year.

I made that tincture and I thought the plant storing up all of that energy into that root to put up that straight stalk—one of the cool things about mullein stalks is if you find a plant, provided it’s not growing in really lose soils, you can grab on to the stalk and bend it over pretty far and if you let go, it goes (makes a sound with swinging up gesture). It doesn’t actually make that noise, but imagine the noise in your head when it goes and it straightens right back up. Even if you do that and maybe the stem kinks and then it’s bent over to the side, you will then see the growing part of the stalk start to grow straight up. It’s really pretty cool. It wants to be upright. It wants to be vertical. I’ve just decided that my impression is that that is a quality that is stored in that root. I use it for spinal misalignments. I will use it often with Solomon’s seal. If there’s nerve involvement, with St. John’s wort or maybe sweet clover. If there’s a weakness of the connective tissues, fascia and cartilage, I’ll usually throw in some horsetail in there or maybe some royal fern into that, Osmunda regalis.

I think it’s pretty amazing. These many years into it, decades into it, I feel very confident that mullein root has a specific affinity to spinal misalignments and can be very, very helpful in them. It’s probably one of the things that I get the most email about. My websites have an article on mullein for a long time. There’s an explanation of my thoughts on mullein root for spinal misalignments. When I think about what are people emailing the most about, there are lots of mullein stories. They’re not all like, “I was in terrible pain and then I took mullein, and then all better.” They’re often like, “I’ve been working on this.” Maybe, “I’ve been getting physical therapy or some kind of body work done” or maybe “I was taking some other kind of formula” or using, “following some other kind of protocol and when I added the mullein root in, everything got drastically more effective.” There was a rapid improvement in them. That’s been something that I really love. I love the taste of mullein root too because it’s got this earthy mineral, very, very full flavor.

There’s this weird thing that happens when you tincture it. I’ve seen this in teasel too. I do not know what causes this. I chop up some mullein roots. I put them in my mason jar. I pour my ethanol on top of them. As they’re extracting, the tincture ends up being very, very dark. I’m holding up a very dark jar of mullein root, very, very dark brown, earthy color, kind of a coffee color. When I look at the herb that’s being extracted, sometimes the herb looks brown. Other times it’s a bluish shade of turquoise mixed in there. Other times it’s a greener shade of turquoise mixed in there. There’s like a fluctuation as it’s extracting. I’ve had people who have made the tincture be like, “I think there’s something bad happening because it looks green inside.” No, that’s not mold growing. It’s just something that happens when you’re extracting the root. Mullein root awesomeness.

Matthew Wood uses mullein leaves similarly for spinal misalignments. I have used mullein leaves similarly, but I really feel like the root seems more specific to this. I’m not going to say it’s better, but for me and my relationship to it, it’s my go-to for spinal issues.

People have told me that when mullein is bruised and it blackens, whatever causes that blackening, that constituent, that compound, increases mullein’s ability to act as a pain reliever. I’ve heard about some people that when they’re harvesting mullein and they’re wanting to use it for pain relief, they will bang it around a little bit to bruise it beforehand. I’ve not done that. I never look at mullein and be like, “I want to bang you up a bunch.” I guess it just hasn’t struck me to do that, but I do know people that use it for that. You will commonly see references— and I have not done this of mullein seeds—being used as a fish poison. I have no experience with that.

What I do with mullein seeds is I shake some out of the stalks in the fall and then I spread them to places I want mullein to grow. If you’re doing this, a consideration – mullein, Verbascum thapsus and Verbascum olympicum are not native plants, and so be mindful about how you’re cultivating them. This is not like take them out to your state park and introduce them into national forest and everything like that. They may already be growing there. I think that there is a seemingly infinite seed bank of mullein already in soil everywhere that mullein can possibly grow. I used to make a joke that if you wanted to grow mullein, one of the best ways to cultivate it because the seeds are light-dependent germinators, that means if I have a field full of goldenrod and I throw my own seeds into the field full of goldenrod, they’re not going to germinate because the goldenrod is creating a ton of shade and they don’t have enough light to germinate. But if that field gets plowed up or mowed down and the seeds are exposed to light, all of a sudden a bunch of mullein grows there. When there’s been soil disruption, mullein seeds—that’s perfect for planting mullein seeds. If there’s a burn, like if you burn a brush pile and then throw mullein seeds down on that, they love burnt soil. It loves colonizing burns.

At first, my saying is if you want to cultivate mullein, burn a brush pile and then shake some mullein seeds out there. Then I realized that in a lot of parts of the country, all you need to do is burn the brush pile and there’s already mullein seeds in the soil that’s waiting, and then they just start growing. That doesn’t always happen, but if mullein is common in your area that’s not unlikely.

What else? I think maybe a little bit more esoterically or less physiologically, if I think about mullein and its straight little stalk, it can be used as a—I don’t want to say this—as a magical herb. You can define magical as placebo, if you want to, if that makes you feel better or it’s something that comes out of the backend of a bull. It’s something for people that are having a hard time staying on their path. They try to go on a path and they keep diverging in this direction or in that direction. They can’t keep a directionality to them. In those cases, I want to use mullein. You could take a drop or two or three of the tincture and just be doing it in drop doses the way people would use flower essences. You could rub some of the tincture on your wrists or your third eye or your temples or your heart. You could probably put it on your earlobe. I don’t know that it matters exactly where you put it.

I think the act of and why people could think this is placebo or if they’re inclined to, it’s just a way to do something magically is when you take a tincture, when you apply a tincture, when you hold on to a part of the plant—I’m just going to reach in a little jar and grab some mullein and just hold on to it. Think about it. Hold it to my heart. Hold it to my earlobe again. It allows you to check in with yourself and be like, “What am I trying to do? What is my intention?” It might be that every time you have your mullein tincture and you take your mullein tincture, a few drops of it, you stop, take a breath and you think, “Why am I using this?” You take a few drops of it. That’s important whether that is the plant doing something. If you’re more scientific or materialistic or you just don’t believe in that, that’s fine. If you think it’s all psychological affirmations, that’s also fine. It’s something that you’re using the plant as a catalyst to facilitate an intention, and that’s still using the plant, and that’s always something that’s been done with plants. We don’t want to not think that that just doesn’t happen because it’s not tangible and there’s not an alkaloid or a glycoside that we can attribute to it.

Whenever we take a plant, whether we’re taking it for some kind of intention about how we want to live our lives, are we taking it because our back is hurting? Are we taking it because we wish we could get back into that cross-country pogo stick thing, but it will just be too embarrassing? Are we taking it because we have a respiratory condition? I hear people talk about mullein is good for COPD, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. It can be helpful for that as with interstitial cystitis because that’s a more complicated condition as a part of a larger protocol.

When we take it when we’re making tea, when we’re taking our tincture or our syrup or our whatever form of mullein that we’re using, when we’re lighting our little tea strainer on fire and we’re thinking about doing it, just think about what you want to be doing because the more times you’re connecting with that intention, the more receptive that your body is going to be. It doesn’t matter whether it’s placebo or not. It just helps and it feels good to do that. I encourage doing that with all the plants you use because I’m talking about mullein especially right now.

I’m trying to think of what I didn’t say. I didn’t say that you could dip your mullein flowers stalks in wax or tallow and make a candle. If this was attached to the stalk too, it would be a great torch. Mullein does have a history of being used for torches, but you have to put some kind of burnable fat on it. It’s not like in movies where there’s a stick and someone puts the stick in a fire and all of a sudden, it’s a torch that lasts for a long time. It’s some kind of oil or fat. I had met someone who made the drill part of a bow drill fire starter with mullein stalks. He used mullein leaf as tinder for fire starting and that ties together this connection of mullein and fire together.

We talked about using mullein as a smoke for treating respiratory issues, but some people might want to—they might just like smoking herbs. They might just like smoking. There are couple of different strategies I could make a case for why smoking could be not horrible. One of them is let’s say a person is habitually smoking tobacco. That’s not healthy. That’s bad. It’s undeniably cancer-instigating. If you were to stop smoking pre-rolled cigarettes, either roll your own cigarettes or get a pipe and you started mixing a little bit of mullein into your tobacco, and then a little bit more mullein and a little bit less tobacco, and a little bit more mullein, a little bit less tobacco, and a little bit more mullein and a lot less tobacco, you’re smoking less tobacco and that’s a pretty good thing. Even if you don’t stop smoking, you’re smoking less tobacco.

For some people, maybe they could leave the tobacco out and mix other herbs into their mullein, so that they’ve got a mix of herbs that feels good. The mullein really doesn’t have a lot of flavor. If it’s really, really dry it can be kind of harsh, but if it’s a little bit moist and you add some aromatic herbs, and also importantly, some astringent herbs in there to add body to the flavor of the smoke, it could be a nice smoke that you can use to stop smoking things that are absolutely and undeniably harmful. If it’s just an occasional thing and you have an eccentric wizard pipe. Every now and again, you can take it out and puff on your herbal smoke pipe. A little bit of mullein in the mix can be nice. It helps things of different densities and textures burn more evenly. That’s one of the big reasons that mullein was used in smoking mixtures.

What did I forget Rosalee?

Rosalee de la Forêt:

The things that you forgot you just mentioned. Xavier uses the mullein stalk for fire friction or friction fire. I was going to mention that. We do a lot of the torches too for celebrations. When I think that you’ve forgotten something, you went back and covered it, like the biennial plants. That was something I was going to mention. It feels pretty complete, jim, for now. For now.

jim mcdonald:

I was going to say the big question is, what don’t I know yet? There are stuff that I don’t know yet. This is funny because this is another thing where someone told me that they learned something from me and I’ve never heard that before ever. I was at an international herb symposium conference. I went to one of Matthew Wood’s classes and he was talking. He was talking about mullein and he said, “I learned from jim mcdonald that when you’re gathering mullein, you want to gather the nice leaves on the mullein. You never gather the outer leaves on the perimeter of the basal rosette.” In my head, I was jumping ahead because they’re rotting and have tons of dirt on them, all the reasons I wouldn’t gather them, but he said, “Because they’ll give you nightmares.” I was like, yeah, I never heard that before. I raised my hand and was like, “I’m not sure that that came from me.” He’s like, “No, I very distinctly remember you telling me about that.”

Rosalee de la Forêt:

It seems to be a recurring thing that happens.

jim mcdonald:

Matt and I--there are things I have said to him. I think that I, initially, when I started using mullein roots said I did the mullein root thing. I thought maybe I learned it from him. He’s like, “No, I don’t really use that.” I think even now he doesn’t use mullein root a whole lot. I think he still mostly uses the leaves. We’ve had several different things. I think one time we were at a place together and we did a very impromptu herb walk and he was like, “He’s jim. I’m Matt. We’re the mullein brothers.” Yeah. Alright, I can go with that.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I feel like there needs to be a shirt.

jim mcdonald:

We will get matching shirts soon. I think there’s a video of that somewhere. I have to find it. I don’t know where that’s at. I’m just fascinated to find out what I’m going to learn next about this beginner’s herb that I have not moved on from but moved into.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

jim, for people who are listening and they’re like, “Wow! That was a fantastic download of information about mullein. It blew my mind. I wish I could study with jim more.” Do you have possibilities for that situation?

jim mcdonald:

I do but I remembered one more thing.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Okay, let’s do it.

jim mcdonald:

A lot of people don’t often think about mullein when they’re learning English or learning to spell or learning grammar because they’ve forgotten the old adage of “i” before “e” except in mullein, because it’s M U L L E I N. So, i before e, except in mullein. 

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Sometimes people say—they call it something else. What else do people call mullein? Mulline?

jim mcdonald:

I think mulline. I’ve heard mule-in. Oh, other stuff I do? If you live in Michigan, I teach a lot in Southern Michigan, but also in different… Let’s see. If you’re looking right now, I live here, Southeast Michigan, so I teach here. I also teach in Lansing, which is lower Central Michigan and in Grand Rapids and sometimes in Kalamazoo, which is lower Southwestern Michigan. Sometimes I teach up in Traverse City, which is up where your pinky fingernail would be if you’re holding your hand the right way. I might be doing something somewhere a little bit northwest of Flint. That’s in the works. If you live in Michigan, I teach in Michigan regularly because I live here and I also go to different places and teach. Sometimes I’m at conferences teaching. You can come and see me and I would love that. If you are not somewhere you can come and see me. If you are in Tanzania or maybe you are in Liechtenstein or Madagascar or you live on the Faroe Islands, I also have stuff that’s online.

Right now, I’m taking enrollments. Not right now when you’re watching this, but right now when I’m talking, which is late January, almost February 2024. I’m taking enrollments for both the online version and the in-person version of my lindera course, which runs from April into October. That’s where we talk about herbs and the energetic way that I think about using herbs that are like the framework by which we take all of the pieces of information that we know about herbs and we put them into a useable structure that helps us figure out what to do when someone asks us a question about how we could help them. In person and online that is an option. The websites are herbcraft.org or herbcraft.podia.com. The podia one is for the online stuff. The herbcraft.org is more for the in-person stuff. I can also be found posting on different social media things. Sometimes I’m using little videos that my wife puts together. Sometimes long, rambly posts that I put together. Sometimes I share some of my favorite prog rock, which is just an added bonus in your life.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Like Tori Amos.

jim mcdonald:

Totally, prog. Tori is undoubtedly prog.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Undoubtedly and the best. So, jim, we have a last question for you, which is, “How do herbs instill hope in you?”

jim mcdonald:

Herbs are hope, aren’t they? Nature is hope. Even though we are nature and even though we cannot as humans be disconnected from nature because where would we go to? A lot of people feel disconnected. We’ve got a mental block or a mental sense of disconnection that doesn’t really exist but it’s on our mind anyway. When we look at forests, mountains, rivers, meadows and the plants that grow in them because there are lots of plants—most places that I go to, there are lots of plants—I look at it and that is like my balm. When my life is really hard, when my life is like a struggle and things are tough, even though I’m naturally inclined to be pretty optimistic when I’m just like, “ahh,” I can go out and be in a place where the plants are just growing the way that they just naturally grow, I feel very inspired. I feel a sense of awe and a sense of wonder that to me is like the fuel I need to keep going, to let go of that “I don’t know how I can make this keep working.” Plants are always doing that. They’re always making everything keep working.

There was a time I once was stuck in traffic on an expressway. It was really horrible. We weren’t moving at all. It was more like an expressway and met another expressway. It was all concrete. It just wasn’t moving. It was really hot. I looked out of my window, which I felt like I needed to have down for some fresh air, but I was also like, “Ugh, all these exhaust.” I looked and in the expressway, there was a dandelion growing. It was not only growing. It was flowering! I’ll never forget that moment. Of course, the dandelion is such a great example of this. It’s not only growing. It’s flowering. Plants--they live with everything that they are. Plants don’t say, “My growing conditions are not very conducive to my ability to thrive, so I’m not going to flower. I’m not going to be what I am.” They’re like, “I’m here. I’m going to be what I am with everything that I have,” and they do that. To me, that is really the greatest inspiration that I can think of.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Thank you, jim.

jim mcdonald:

If I was an entomologist, I might find inspiration in the ferocity, the survival instincts of ticks. I’m with the plants, so I’m going with plants for this. I feel like if I did that whole story and it was about ticks, it wouldn’t be… People would not be as receptive to it. There’d be a little bit of [crosstalk]. We all love our dandelions, right?

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Thanks for that reminder of hope, jim. Thank you so much for spending this incredible amount of time sharing about this beginner plant, mullein. I look forward to the next version when it’s like, Mullein 2, and we get to hear all the new ways.

jim mcdonald:

I know. That would be like the—let’s just do how long can we go on the next one. The fourth jim on Herbs with Rosalee Podcast is going to be how long before Rosalee is like, “No, you have to stop.” We’ll see which one of us can hold that longer.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

We should do a webinar with that and then we could just see at what point people drift away.

jim mcdonald:

We could have it where people—because a lot of times—I pulled my headphones out again. A lot of times people will want to come to a class and, “The class starts at 3:00 and I don’t get out of work until 6:00” or whatever. What if we have something and it’s like, “This is the start time, but you can just jump in whenever because we’re going to keep going until we can’t banter anymore.” I don’t know if I know how long that will take.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I definitely think that I would give up before you, jim. I’m just saying it now I don’t know.

jim mcdonald:

You could probably—there’s probably a couch or something there or… does your chair recline? You can have a blanket. I’ll just keep going.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Get really comfy? Bring your popcorn and cider. We should maybe take a poll, see if that’s what people really want. In the meantime-

jim mcdonald:

Oh, we’re going to take a poll? I feel really confident now because I feel like there’s a lot of people that are going to be yes to this idea.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Okay, we’ll see.

jim mcdonald:

What we got out of this is that we’re going to do a never-ending podcast for our next episode, and also I think in the beginning of the show you said that I was in charge of the show, I can do whatever you want. So, it’s done! All recorded.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Alright. Right now, I was going to say I wish there was no proof of this but there is. Alright, jim, I’m going to call it now. That’s what I’m doing right now. We’re calling it for today.

jim mcdonald:

Thank you as always. Wonderful to chat herbs with you and also just to spend time with you because you’re awesome.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Thanks, jim. It’s been a pleasure as always. Thanks.

jim mcdonald:

You’re awesome, too.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

As always, thanks for being here.

If you’d like more herbal episodes to come your way, then one of the best ways to support this podcast is by subscribing on YouTube or your favorite podcast app. I deeply believe that this world needs more herbalists and plant-centered folks and I’m so glad that you’re here as part of this herbal community.

Also, a big round of thanks to the people all over the world who make this podcast happen week to week. Nicole Paull is the Project Manager who oversees the whole operation from guest outreach, to writing show notes, to actually uploading each episode and so many other things I don’t even know. She really holds this whole thing together.

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One of the best ways to retain and fully understand something you’ve just learned is to share it in your own words. With that in mind, I invite you to share your takeaways with me and the entire Herbs with Rosalee Community. You can leave comments on my YouTube Channel, at the bottom of this page or simply hit “Reply” to my Wednesday emails. I read every comment that comes in and I’m excited to hear your herbal thoughts and ahas about mullein.

Okay, you have lasted to the very end of the show, which for this episode is saying a lot. That means you get a gold star and this herbal tidbit:

jim certainly covered a lot about mullein in this episode, so I had my work cut out for me to find these herbal tidbits, but I did find two more benefits of this tenacious and generous plant. The first is its ability to heal wounds. A 2021 randomized control trial involving women with episiotomy wounds found that those using a cream with mullein showed better healing than those using a placebo.

Something to keep in mind when harvesting all plants, but especially mullein, is to know that the soils you’re harvesting from aren’t contaminated with heavy metals. Mullein is well-known for its ability to pull heavy metals from the soil, which is awesome for soil remediation in polluted areas, but it isn’t great for your cup of tea.

If you’d like even more mullein in your life, check out my solo episode all about mullein.

Cheers!