Achillea millefolium
Yarrow
Transcending time, traversing geographies and cultures, and possessing a reputation of strength and elegance, yarrow is one of the oldest and most well-known plants in Western herbalism and has been used in a variety of cultures and herbal traditions.
A Herbal Hero Through the Ages
Yarrow has been used from at least the time of the ancient Greeks and Egyptians, with the greatest of the Greek warriors championing one of the plant’s botanical classifications. Yarrow’s genus name Achillea hails from Achilles, the Greek hero who purportedly gained his renowned invulnerability when his mother dipped him in a bath of yarrow tea at birth (all but the heel by which she held him), and who used yarrow on the wounds of his friends.
In fact, yarrow was used from the time of the ancient Greeks up until the American Civil War to staunch soldiers’ wounds and support the body’s natural process, hence its common names: woundwort, soldiers’ woundwort, staunch weed, nosebleed, and carpenter’s weed.
The Blood Herb
Herbalist Matthew Wood’s refers to this plant as “master of the blood”, which is indicative of a long-known fact: yarrow can modulate one of the most vital components of the human body.
Yarrow has the ability to regulate blood flow through the skin, capillaries, and venules, and can thicken or thin the blood to address various complaints such as bruising, wounds, hemorrhaging, and clotting.
An herbal sitz bath containing yarrow can be used to help aid irritation from hemorrhoids, and to guard against them recurring. Wood states that yarrow can “decongest blood associated with inflammation, thin stagnant, congealed blood, tone the veins, [stimulate] the capillaries and arteries, and move the blood to or from the surface”.