Teasel Medicinal Uses

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My conversation with Dr. Patrick Jones ranged widely, from the wonders of teasel medicinal uses to amazing tales from Doc Jones’ veterinary practice, including how herbs helped heal severe wounds and treat rattlesnake bites. (That last one was my personal question.)

Teasel is an herb I admittedly don’t work with a lot, but it’s a fascinating plant, both in its gifts and how it grows. Doc Jones has seen it help multiple clients in his naturopathy practice with nerve pain or damage. You won’t want to miss the stories he relates about patients who were helped by teasel’s unique gifts! And as a listener, you’ll also receive free access to a downloadable recipe card for Doc’s Teasel & Hops Pain Spray.

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

► The important role intuition can play in learning about herbs

► Why it’s smart to address pain from more than one direction

► How to identify and when to harvest teasel

► Why working with herbs may be challenging for some medical professionals (and the foundation they need for working successfully with both pharmaceuticals and herbs)

► and more…

For those who don’t already know him, Dr. Patrick Jones is a clinical herbalist, traditional naturopath and practicing veterinarian. Because of his veterinary credentials, he's been able to use herbs to treat cases most herbalists don't get to address. Cases like rattlesnake bites, gunshot wounds and serious disease make up his daily practice.

Because of the amazing things he's seen herbs do in both his naturopathy and veterinary practices, Doc has an evangelical zeal to teach others about medicinal plants. This passion gave rise to the founding of The HomeGrown Herbalist School of Botanical Medicine.

It was a delight to finally sit down with Doc Jones and I’m so happy to share our conversation with you today!

-- TIMESTAMPS -- for Teasel Medicinal Uses

• 01:13 – Introduction to Dr. Patrick Jones
• 02:42 – Dr. Jones’ path to plants
• 08:08 – Herbs can be powerfully healing for animals!
• 11:37 – Herbs and Western medicine
• 16:06 – How Dr. Jones got to know teasel (Dipsacus spp.)
• 23:44 – Teasel and Hops Pain Spray
• 27:43 – When to harvest teasel root
• 28:27 – Treating rattlesnake bites in the veterinary practice
• 33:43 – HomeGrown Herbalist offerings
• 35:57 – A tribute to Michael Moore
• 41:13 - Herbal tidbit

Get Your Free Recipe!

Connect with Dr. Patrick Jones

• Website | homegrownherbalist.net
• Instagram | @homegrown_herbalist_school
• Facebook | @HomegrownHerbalist
• YouTube | @HomeGrown Herbalist

Transcript of the 'Teasel Medicinal Uses with Dr. Patrick Jones' 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 podcast app. Also, to get my best herbal tips as well as fun bonuses, be sure to sign up for my weekly herbal newsletter below.

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

It was a delight to finally sit down with Doc Jones. He’s a celebrated herbalist and veterinarian who has inspired many with his incredible case studies. I’ve known about Dr. Patrick Jones for many years and was excited to finally meet him in real life through Zoom. Our conversation covers many topics from healing wounds to rattlesnake bites, which is my personal question, and to the wonders of teasel.

For those of you who don’t already know him, Dr. Patrick Jones is a clinical herbalist, traditional naturopath and practicing veterinarian. Because of his veterinary credentials, he’s been able to use herbs to treat cases that most herbalists don’t get to address. Cases like rattlesnake bites, gunshot wounds and serious disease make up his daily practice.

Because of the amazing things he’s seen herbs do both in his naturopathy and veterinary practices, Doc has an evangelical zeal to teach others about medicinal plants. This passion gave rise to the founding of The Homegrown Herbalist School of Botanical Medicine.

Welcome to the show, Patrick. I’m so excited to have you here.

Dr. Patrick Jones:

I’m really happy to be here. I’ve been anxious to visit with you. We sort have been in contact off and on over the years. I always thought it’d be fun to actually sit down and talk to you, so I’m excited.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Likewise, likewise. I’m very excited as well. Very excited to talk about the plant that you chose because it’s the first time that plant’s on the show, but before we get there I would love to hear more about you and how you found yourself on this meandering path of naturopathy and veterinarian and herbs, all of it.

Dr. Patrick Jones:

How does that happen to a guy? I guess as a kid I actually started as an edible plants guy. That’s where I started. Really big fan of Euell Gibbons and Boy Scouts, wilderness survival and all that fun stuff. As you learn about plants you can eat, pretty soon you’ll learning about one that’s maybe good for this or good for that for medical things, but most of us, I know plant stuff. I went to South America. I was a missionary down in South America for a while in Peru. The first night I was there, I was really broken out. I was about 19 or 20 and I was really broken out. I walked into the home of the sweet little lady that was going to put me up until I got on a bus and went somewhere else. She looks at my face and says, [speaks in Spanish], “Go to the market and buy some maita.” I don’t know what the heck maita is. I go down to the market and there’s all these cute, little Peruvian ladies sitting on blankets with stuff they’re selling. I’m going to each lady saying, “Do you have some maita?” They look at me. “These are candles, buddy, you know. These are frying pans.”

Eventually, they pointed me to the right direction. I found a lady that had a big pile of leaves on her blanket. I bought a bag of them and took them back to the lady. She threw them in a pot, got them steaming, stuck my head over the pot and put a towel over it to fix my face, to fix my skin and it cleared right up. I felt remarkably better shortly after that. Living with those folks down in Peru for the time that I did, they are really living close to the land still. They still really have an intimate connection to the plants that we, in North America, are losing. It really fired me up about—I had a lot of other experiences like that in Peru with people fixing this and fixing that, just having that… If you have this problem, you go out in the yard and get this or you go out in the forest and get that. It was just a really beautiful cultural connection that they have with the plants.

When I came home, went to veterinary school, and of course, they beat all that out of you. They have a different tool set. When I got into practice, I started feeling around with herbs and doing this and that, having good success. I had a dog came in that was actually dying of liver failure. Really, really sick. Her gums were just dark yellow. The whites of her eyes were dark yellow. Modern medicine really has nothing for that. We can support them. You put them on an IV and make them feel better. We don’t have a medicine to fix a liver that’s in that kind of shape.

One of my buddies came in the clinic for something else and said, “Holy cow! What’s wrong with that dog?” I saw she’s just really struggling and probably not going to make it. He says, “You ought to call Mickey. He’ll straighten her out.” Mickey is a friend of mine, Mickey Young, old rodeo cowboy. I didn’t know he was an herbalist. I just knew him from church. Anyway, he’s got a company called, Silver Lining Herbs, that does horse supplements. I called him up and I say, “So, Mick, I got this dog that’s trying to die. Roland said to call you.” “Oh, yeah. What’s going on?” He says, “You need a bag. No. 27 is what you need.” He came over to my clinic and gives me a little bag full of green powder, a Ziploc bag. We did this “drug deal” in the parking lot and I started giving it to her. She wasn’t eating at all, so I just mixed it with a little water and syringed it into her mouth. The next day, she wanted to eat and three days later, she went home right as rain, completely resolved. It wasn’t anything magic about the formula. It’s just the usual suspects for liver stuff, Oregon grape and burdock and milk thistle and things like that, but it had a huge impact on her.

So, I started really getting into it. I mean, I’ve been dabbling before, but I started really, really getting into it and spent the next 20 years, I guess, really, really working with herbs a lot in the vet practice. Eventually, I went to naturopathy school and opened a human practice. If you’re a dog, you go to that building. If there are six other dogs, you go to the other building and we’ll figure it out one way or another. It’s been sort of an adventure but that’s how I got started.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Thank you for that. I know you’ve opened a lot of us—our eyes, just how healing herbs can be with animals. A very famous case study I’ve seen over the years is with Max, if I remember correctly, and this incredible wound. You remember Max?

Dr. Patrick Jones:

I remember Max.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

The pictures are pretty horrific.

Dr. Patrick Jones:

They are. 

Rosalee de la Forêt:

And then the healing process from that is just incredible.

Dr. Patrick Jones:

Wound management was something I did a ton of over the years and Max wasn’t the worst one. There’s a lot of—I have a blog over on my website, homegrownherbalist.net. There’s lots of case studies of different things. There are some other wound cases there. There’s another case where there was really nothing surgically or medically that I could do for that dog, and the herbs completely resolved it. In fact, he just died. I got an email from his mom a year or two ago. She sent me a picture of this old, gray Labrador with the gray muscle. She said, “I just want to let you know Max passed away. He spent his whole life running around on that leg with no trouble at all.” He’d gotten tangled up in the back tire of a pickup. He jumped out of a pickup. It had too much rope and so he hung over the side and the tire was like a belt sander on his leg and just took all the flesh off the inside of the leg and wore the bone down about 20%. He had open bone marrow and sepsis. By the time I got him, he was really, really sick, temp of 106 and thinking about dying real hard.

The herbs were—when I first got him, I put him on IV antibiotics. He was going to die. I’m a vet. That’s what you do. The next day, his fever was still through the roof so I put him on a different big gun IV antibiotic and did nothing. Next day, he’s still going to die and I thought, “Why aren’t those antibiotics getting into that infected bone marrow?” The voice in my head says, “Because all the circulation to that bone marrow is out on the tire, dummy. You’re thinking about this all wrong.” I thought I got to start thinking like an herbalist. I got some goldenseal and calendula powder, mixed it with a little water and smeared it into that bone marrow, literally, put him on a big dose of Echinacea and 12 hours later, he wanted something to eat and was up and at ‘em. It took about—and from that point on—I was already using some poultice material and comfrey and stuff to try and accelerate the healing. The miracle with Max wasn’t healing the wound. It was reversing that sepsis. It was high frequent doses of Echinacea, calendula. Again, the usual suspects. I had him on some immune supporting stuff and some antibacterial stuff and herbs. They sent me a picture not too long ago of him and said he had lived a good old life and lived happily ever after running around, chasing rock chucks with that leg.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

That must be very satisfying. I’m sure you have many stories about happy animals and people. I’m curious how accepted are herbs within veterinary school? You mentioned they beat it out of you back in the day when you went. Is it changing at all?

Dr. Patrick Jones:

I haven’t been to veterinary school for a really long time.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I don’t know. Your colleagues? Do people—are they excited to hear what you’re doing? Do they look down at you?

Dr. Patrick Jones:

I’ll tell you they are. They are. The kid—the gentleman that bought my veterinary practice here a year or two ago, was very interested in keeping that going, and learning some things and using some herbs. The clientele, the veterinary, the people that own animals are very, very interested. There’s a very high demand for natural remedies and holistic remedies. I never had any opposition from clients. Veterinarians vary a lot. Some of them are all in and some of them are all out. It’s just like the medical profession a little bit. I understand that as a guy who is medically trained, if you’re using pharmaceuticals on a person or an animal, you need to know what they’re going to do and how they’re going to do it and what to expect.

Herbs and drugs don’t always play well together, so they don’t want wrenches thrown into the works. They need to know what’s going on. They don’t know diddly about herbs so they can’t support that, but if you understand both, you can do amazing things because sometimes the herbs make the drugs work way better. Sometimes they inhibit the side effects. They can do a lot of good things. Sometimes they make your liver get rid of them way too fast. Sometimes they make the drug not work or not be absorbed. You have to understand both to use both. I think the veterinarians and the profession are getting more open minded about it, more willing to learn more about it and anybody that’s willing to learn about it. It’s a no-brainer to use it. The things you can do with plants are astounding compared to the things you do with pharmaceuticals.

In my vet practice, I had a couple of cupboards about that big with drugs in them and I had a whole room full of herbs. I don’t have a medicine that can make tissue heal faster or make your liver really happy and get rid of jaundice. There’s a lot of things you can do with herbs and the complexity of the medicine in a plant is so much more vast than the one thing that’s in the drug.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

It’s especially important for, say infections.

Dr. Patrick Jones:

For everything else too, it’s a package deal. God made these phenomenal delivery systems. Reductionist science would want to understand things so we take it apart in a million pieces and say, “That’s the piece that matters.” All the other pieces are really important too. If you eat the plant, you get the whole package.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I often say when I have instances of—let’s say I have a sprain that’s hurting me and then I put on comfrey and I have really quick results, I think “What do people do without herbs?” This week I was coming down with a cold and I just hit on my favorite numbers and the cold never manifested. I think, “What do people do without herbs?” They’re just so incredibly valuable.

Dr. Patrick Jones:

I was watching a documentary about people that were traveling west back in the 1800s that had nothing and they were running into some trouble with starving, illness and all these things because the Oregon trail was hard for people. I’m watching—it was a dramatization. They’re walking through the desert, through the sagebrush and stuff and I’m saying, “Eat that. Eat that. Eat that. Use that for the medicine. Use that for the—“ You guys are missing the whole show of what you could be doing if you knew what the plants are for. It’s a really precious thing to be acquainted with those little green rascals and all the wonderful things they want to do for us.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Absolutely. I’m excited to hear what you have to share about teasel. This is a plant that I admittedly don’t work with a lot, but it’s a plant that—it’s such a fascinating plant both in its gifts, as well as how it grows. I’m excited to hear what you have to share about it.

Dr. Patrick Jones:

Teasel is a fun plant. It’s an amazing plant. I have to tell you I didn’t know anything about it either. I didn’t even know what it was. I was actually driving down the road with a buddy of mine who’s actually a plant scientist. I saw the plant growing in the ditch bank along the side of the road. I had this intense feeling, “You’ve got to learn this plant.” It was big. You learn to follow those feelings. I asked him. I said, “Fred, what plant is that?” He said, “I don’t know what that is.” I said, “You got a degree in plant science. You need to get your money back from that college. You’re supposed to know these things. That’s why I hang around with you.” He didn’t know what it was. A week later, I was at a buddy’s house who worked for me. He’s an herb guy. I saw the plant. I had that same feeling and I said, “What is that plant?” He says, “That’s teasel.” I said, “What’s it good for?” He says, “I don’t know that it’s good for anything.” I said, “It’s really good for something.” 

I actually grabbed a shovel and dug up roots and started a tincture that day knowing nothing about it. I got out all my old, dusty herb books and said, “What is going on here?” It’s sort of an unfashionable herb. They used to use it a lot back in the old days, but it’s sort of bell bottom is teasel. Things go in and out. I think it’s ready for a comeback. I was reading in the old, dusty herb books. They used to use it for pain, neuralgias and weird pains they couldn’t explain.

I started doing some research. Stephen Harrod Buhner was doing some great work with it on Lyme disease, so I said, “Okay, so what’s the big deal? I don’t know anybody with weird nerve pain or Lyme disease.” It’s not such a big deal for me. The day I was pressing the tincture, I’m actually literally pressing the tincture, this lady comes in and she says, “Doc, I’ve got this horrible nerve pain. I was in an accident years ago and I have all these scar tissue and nerve entrapment and nothing helps. I’m in horrible pain all the time. Do you have anything?” I’m pressing the tincture. Maybe I do. Anyway, I gave it to her. She took it for a couple of weeks and the pain went away. It felt better immediately, but in two weeks it was gone forever.

So, I got really interested in teasel and what I’ve learned about it is that you can use it for pain if you have arthritis or a sore shoulder or whatever. You can take teasel internally or you can put it on topically even as a tincture. Just spread the tincture right on you. It works really good for pain, but sometimes we have pain that’s old pain from something that happened a long time ago – phantom pains and memory pains. It’s almost like when your computer gets frozen up and you got to reboot the dumb thing so it remembers what the mouse is for. Sometimes our nerves do that. They feel like it’s their job to tell you all day everyday that you were in an accident 20 years ago, but there’s nothing active happening. It’s just an old obsession they have with that injury. Sometimes in my experience, sometimes teasel turns that off. Sometimes it reboots that “nervous system computer.” I’ve had in a number of cases, not always, sometimes there are still something active going on. You got a bone spur something, some inflammation, some damage. In some cases, it just makes it be done. It’s really a miraculous, huge blessing. It’s really cool.

I’ve also used it on—that same week, I was in a conference. I was at my table selling my book and yakking to people about herbs. This gal walks up and she says, “Do you have anything for MS?” I started to say, “I don’t know anything about MS. Dogs don’t get MS. We don’t even talk about MS in veterinary school.” I started to apologize for knowing nothing about what I can do to help this lady. I had clear as clear nerve pain. Nerve pain, so I said, “I don’t know but try this.” She said—she took some home and emailed me back. What I said to her—I didn’t know why I did this either. I started to say, “Just take it. Have a teaspoon a couple of times a day.” That’s what I’ve done with the other gal. I started to say that and I felt like, “No, no, no.” I just heard myself saying to her, “I want you to take one drop three times a day and increase it by a drop every day. If you hit to more than a teaspoon or so, holler. Let me know.” I got a call from her about two weeks later and she says, “Doc, you get to send me a picture of that plant. I don’t ever want to not have this plant because when I hit 14 or 15 drops a couple of times a day, it was like a switch went off and I feel way better.” It didn’t cure the MS, but she felt way better. This was a gal that two or three days a week, her husband was carrying her to the shower because she was having a bad day. 

A year later, I’m actually telling this story. I was on a plant walk. We were up on the boondocks, looking at stuff in the woods and this gal raises her hand in the front row and says, “It was me.”

Rosalee de la Forêt:

No way!

Dr. Patrick Jones:

Now, we’re all bawling. She says, “I’m off all my meds and I feel pretty good most of the time.”

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Wow.

Dr. Patrick Jones:

I’ve only had—you don’t have a ton of people with MS in the practice, but I’ve had seven or eight people. I’m working with a couple right now, currently. Every one of those people says, “My doctor keeps telling me I have no idea while you’re still walking in here. You should be in a wheelchair by now. You should be way worse than you are. Whatever you’re doing, keep doing.” It’s not curing them. I have no idea what the mechanism is. Some guy with a microscope and some mice is going to have to figure that out someday, but it has strong effects on nerves. MS is the myelin on the sheaths of the nerves breaks down. It’s a nerve issue. I don’t know how it’s working, but it really is my experience, which is very limited and not statistically true. I’ll tell you what. When the ninth guy comes in, I’m going to try it on him too because it has worked on the other eight. It’s really an interesting plant. I would certainly want the word to get out for people that will be trying it for different things. Like I said, Stephen Harrod Buhner used it for Lyme. I’ve used it—I’ve only done one or two Lymes case because we don’t see it around here, but it seemed to help them for that. I’ve done it on fibromyalgia cases. I’ve done it on other just weird nerve pain things. Sometimes it just makes it go away for a couple of hours. You have to put it on again like skullcap or valerian or hops or things like that. Sometimes if they do it for a while, it really does fix that pain in a significant way.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Speaking of hops, the recipe that you shared with us is a teasel and hops pain spray, which I’m very intrigued about. I’ve been turning to hops more and more recently for pain, especially spasmodic pain and pain with tension. I love the combination and I’d love to hear more from you about it.

Dr. Patrick Jones:

It’s just two herbs that I find very good for pain that work in very different ways. One of the smart things to do as herbalists is to attack that thing from more than one direction, something physicians could learn from. Hops is really great for pain. It’s in the Cannabinaceae family, which is the same family that Cannabis is in, but it doesn’t have any of the THC intoxicating marijuana things that Cannabis has. It seems to have as much or more power to resolve pain. It binds with those little cannabinoid receptors, makes them happy and does good things for pain. I’ve used it topically for pain a lot and that’s a more temporary fix. It’s not undoing it like teasel will once in a while, but it’s another great thing. It’s just a nice combination of those two guys together can offer. I just make the tincture and spray it on. I’m using it topically just as needed.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Are there particular types of pain that you see this? You mentioned with teasel, old pain that sat in the nervous system. You mentioned spasmodic pain. Any other pain guidelines?

Dr. Patrick Jones:

It doesn’t really matter.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

It doesn’t matter? Okay.

Dr. Patrick Jones:

No, they don’t care – pinched nerve, sore muscles. Whatever you got that hurts, you spray something on it and it fixes it. I’ve used it on lots of things. The way I discovered that hops was good for pain—I’ve always used it for GI stuff and stress stuff. It’s a nervine and it does a lot of good things. It’s got some mild antibiotic properties for gut infections. I’d always use it internally for stuff like that. I’d never used it for pain.

I’m actually writing a book on medicinal trees and shrubs. I was trying to figure out what to do with the vines because I’m not going to write a book about vines. I said, “Put the vines in the tree book. They’re climbing the trees.” I couldn’t remember how many Ms were in Humulus, so I looked up on Wikipedia. They know how to spell things. They’re Humulus lupulus. There’s only one M, by the way, if anyone is listening and taking careful notes. I saw there “Family: Cannabaceae,” which I knew but hadn’t thought about for 10 years. I thought, “Holy cow. That’s Cannabaceae. I wonder if that’s good for pain.” 

As I was grabbing my pencil to write down how many Ms were in Humulus, I had this shooting pain in my wrist. I lifted a couch or something a couple of weeks before and had this really bad neuralgia in my wrist. I thought, “That hurts. I should spray some hops on and see what happens.” Went to the herb room, the shipping room for the herb—we have a little herb supplement company—grabbed a bottle of hops and start sloshing it on my wrist. My son-in-law comes and says, “Patrick, we’ve got little spray tops for those bottles. They’re just right over here.” I’m standing in a puddle of hops. I didn’t get over there—it wasn’t 10 feet away. I didn’t get to the spray bottle before that pain was gone. So, I have become a big fan of hops topically for pain. It’s good for all those other things too. Great plants, great treasures, these little guys.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Wonderful duo. I’m sure it’s going to be helpful for many people. Thank you so much for sharing that recipe. For listeners, if you want to download your copy, you can click the link above this transcript. Was there anything else you’d like to share about teasel before we move on?

Dr. Patrick Jones:

It’s a biennial plant, so it’s a two-year cycle. The root is the medicine. The only important thing is if you’re going to harvest your own, you want to get the root either at the end of the first year or the early spring of the second year before it shoots up to flower and seed and die. Other than that, just the timing of harvest is the only real thing that matters on it. Nothing looks like teasel. It’s very easy to identify so it’s super safe that way. There are several species and I’ve used several species and I don’t care which one I use. They all seem to work fine.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Good to know. Before we do move on, I just have a personal interest and wondering about rattlesnake bites and herbs. Rattlesnakes are a personal phobia of mine and I do get to live by them. The snakes where I live are very mild and you don’t really hear about a lot of problems. My motto is that I always have 2 ounces of Echinacea tincture in my little backpack when I’m out hiking. I’m going to go to the hospital, but I’m going to have that with me too. I want to hear from you because I know you have actual experience. This is not going to be like the you read it in a book sometime.

Dr. Patrick Jones:

Right.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

If you don’t mind me asking again about rattlesnake bites and herbs, I’d like to hear about it.

Dr. Patrick Jones:

No, happy to. I’ve treated a number of rattlesnake bites over the years only in the veterinary practice. In the naturopath practice, I’d never see one. I guess when they hear that noise, they don’t stick their head under the bush and say, “Why are you making that noise?”

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I will not do that. That’s for the record. I know what that sound is.

Dr. Patrick Jones:

It’s always a Labrador and it’s always on his nose. Rattlesnake venom and brown recluse spider venom and hobo spider venom – all three of those venoms are very similar. They have an enzyme in them called “hyaluronidase,” which dissolves hyaluronic acid which is the glue that holds your cells together. Echinacea is an herb that has a chemical in it that’s a hyaluronidase inhibitor. The Echinacea actually stops the venom from dissolving the tissue, and Echinacea, just because she’s a real sweetheart, also stimulates your body to make more hyaluronic acid. It’s the other thing that Echinacea likes to do, one of the 20 other things she likes to do. Of course, she’s got some immune stimulating properties, some mild antibiotic properties, some good things for the infection from the bite, but mostly, she’s stopping it from dissolving. I put that in.

The other herbs I put in my formula are dandelion root, just because it’s a liver tonic and a kidney tonic to help eliminate toxins. I put plantain in because plantain is astounding for pulling poison out of the body. I put marshmallow in. The reason I put marshmallow is because in my experience, marshmallow has—marshmallow is a great herb. If I only had five herbs, she’d be on the list. It’s an amazing plant. One of the things that I see in marshmallow that most people don’t use it for or see, is that if I have an animal come in that has a really serious injury and they’re starting to have tissue death, they’re starting to get the line and everything below that line is going to die and fall off, pre-gangrene, early gangrene—if I get marshmallow on that wound topically and in that body internally, I’ve never once not had that line gone in 12 hours. Never once. Marshmallow just has a capacity go in and talk tissue out of dying. I don’t know if it’s because she’s really cute or really personable or what it is, but she can talk to those guys into taking them on for the team and hang in there. Those are-

Rosalee de la Forêt:

That’s so interesting to hear because I know historically, marshmallow was used. It’s called “mortification root.” It’s used for wounds. I’ve read about that a lot historically. I’ve always said I think there’s a lot of potential here, but I don’t work a lot with wounds so it’s great to hear that.

Dr. Patrick Jones:

You think about it as being soothing for wounds. It’s mucilage and that’s absolutely true too, but it’s doing way more than that. We’re stopping tissue death. That’s the formula. I call it “venom and sting.” The plantain, Echinacea, marshmallow and dandelion are equal parts. I put it on topically and I do it internally. If it’s a bite, I do it frequently. I’m going to be doing that every three or four hours, probably for a couple to three days. Once things settle down, I’ll do a couple of times a day for a couple of weeks. That’s how I do a rattlesnake bite. I’ve never had one that didn’t—wherever they are with tissue loss and swelling and trouble, wherever we start the formula that’s where the trouble stops. Like I say, I’ve had a number of cases over the years. It works really well.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Thank you so much for sharing that. May I never have to use that ever except to share what I learned from you.

Dr. Patrick Jones:

I hope you don’t. 

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I will definitely not put my head under the bush to wonder what that sound is.

Dr. Patrick Jones:

Don’t do it. Don’t do it.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

No problem. No problem.

Dr. Patrick Jones:

That’s right. They always talk about herbs being snake oil. Snake oil, my understanding is that snake oil actually was Echinacea root. Next time your physician says, “That stuff, that snake oil,” say, “I’m so glad you’re a believer. Aren’t those hyaluronidase inhibitors amazing?” Great plants. 

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I’d love to talk about all the different offerings you have because you are such a wealth of knowledge and experience. You share that to your school through your books and I know people are going to want to know how they can hear more from you.

Dr. Patrick Jones:

We have homegrownherbalist.net, is the website. We have an herb supplement company. I’ve got 80 or so formulas for whatever you can think of and single herbs too. We try and grow as much of our own stuff as we can. We can’t grow everything but we grow some. I’ve written a couple of books. The HomeGrown Herbalist and The HomeGrown Herbalist Guide to Medicinal Weeds are the two books. Those are on Amazon or you can go to homegrownherbalist.net and buy them. 

Rosalee de la Forêt:

These books are highly rated and I love all the commentaries about how humorous they are. People love it.

Dr. Patrick Jones:

The guy that wrote them is kind of a nut. Then we have the school. We have an online school, The HomeGrown Herbalist School of Botanical Medicine. It’s lifetime enrolment and people really like it. We have about 5,000 students I think, everywhere in the world. It’s really fun. We enjoy it. It’s a real hands on, in the trenches medicine because that’s how I learned it. I learned herbal medicine by doing it all day. In the vet practice, I get to do whatever I want. We got to play with lots of things with herbs that some herbalists don’t get to play with. It was a good laboratory to learn things.

Rosalee de la Forêt: 

Fabulous. We’ll have all that information in the show notes and on screen and everything so people can find you easily.

Dr. Patrick Jones:

Tell you what, Rosalee. Email me your address and I’ll send you those books because I have a couple of yearbooks and they’re really good.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

It sounds like fun. I will take you up on that.

Dr. Patrick Jones:

If any of you guys haven’t bought Rosalee’s books, go buy them. They’re really good.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Thank you so much. Last question of the show is what we’re asking everybody for Season 10 and that is, “Who have you learned from? Apart from the plants themselves, who has your teachers been?”

Dr. Patrick Jones:

I don’t have a formal education in herbal medicine. I didn’t go to herb school or nature, but I went to naturopath school. They made me teach the herb stuff when I went. I thought maybe they should give me a discount, but they didn’t. We all have mentors even sometimes we haven’t met that have really impacted us. One of my favorites was Michael Moore. He wrote Medicinal Plants of the Mountain West, and Medicinal Plants of the Pacific West, and the Medicinal Plants of the Desert and Canyon West. He has four or five books. Michael Moore was—I wish I could’ve met him. He seemed like a great guy and he certainly was a beautiful blend of science and understanding chemistry and physiology, and also just loving the plants, feeling the plants and hearing the plants--that connection. He spent a lot of his life as a professional wildcrafter. He was out in the boondocks and every single plant he talks about he was trying it to see what it did. It wasn’t just academic for him. It was very much a lifestyle learned by doing. He’s somebody that I had a lot of respect for.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Also, that quirky sense of humor too.

Dr. Patrick Jones:

He was really funny. He also wrote a book called, Los Remedios, the remedies, which was a bunch of, a collection of remedies that the curanderas used. The curanderas, the herb ladies and the midwives in South Western United States and Mexico, the stuff they’ve been doing forever. It was just a culturally—it was a cull that he paid homage to those guys and wanted to save and preserve what they’ve been doing. Really a great herbalist, great person. I could tell.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Thanks for sharing about him. It’s been such a pleasure to have you. It’s been great to get to meet you in real life, not just through email and reading your blog, etc. Thank you so much for being on the show and for sharing your experience and wisdom with us.

Dr. Patrick Jones:

I feel the same way, Rosalee. It was delightful to be able to sit down with you and visit a little bit. I’ve been a fan and a friend forever even though I’m very far away and we don’t ever get to talk. I just always I had nice thoughts about you.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Thank you so much.

Dr. Patrick Jones:

You’re doing great work.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Thank you very much and thanks again for being on the show.

Dr. Patrick Jones:

You betcha.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Thanks for being here. Don’t forget to download your beautifully illustrated recipe card above this transcript. Also sign up for my weekly newsletter below. That is the best way to stay in touch with me. You can also visit Dr. Patrick Jones directly at homegrownherbalist.net. 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 and 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.

Francesca is our fabulous video and audio editor. She not only makes listening more pleasant. She also adds beauty to the YouTube videos with plant images and video overlays. Tatiana Rusakova is the botanical illustrator who creates gorgeous plant and recipe illustrations for us. I love them. I know that you do too. Kristy edits the recipe cards and then Jenny creates them as well as the thumbnail images for YouTube. Michele is the tech wizard behind the scenes and Karin is our Student Services Coordinator and Customer Support. For those of you who like to read along, Jennifer is who creates the transcripts each week. Xavier, my handsome French husband, is the cameraman and website IT guy. It takes an herbal village to make it all happen including you.

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 email. I read every comment that comes in and I’m excited to hear your herbal thoughts on teasel and herbal medicine for animals. 

Okay, you’ve lasted to the very end of this show which means you get a gold star and this herbal tidbit:

Teasel is a fascinating plant. It’s originally from Northern Africa, Asia and Europe. It generously grows as a weed in North America. As Patrick mentioned, it’s a biennial plant. It has a two-year life cycle. In the second year, the flower had emerged around the summer time. These flower head spikes have narrow tubular flowers, which are densely crowded together. The teasel flowers begin to bloom in the middle of the spike. They have these kind of light lavender color flowers. As they continue to bloom which can go on for about a couple of months, the flowers separate so there’s a ring of flowers moving towards the top and one towards the bottom.  Those long tubular flowers attract long-tongued bees, butterflies and skippers. The dried flower head is often used in floral arrangements. As a reminder, when harvesting teasel, you want to harvest the taproot at the end of the first year of growth or the beginning of the second.

Enjoy teasel!