Plantain is an amazing plant likely found in your garden. We are not talking about that greenish type of banana but a green plant found in your back yard. People often remove plantain as they find is unattractive, but this little plant has great potential.
Plantain is called the “band-aid” plant as it has soothing and anti-inflammatory properties, all thanks to a natural compound found in this plant: iridoids. Besides this, the plantain contains aglycone and aucubigenin, which have documented antimicrobial properties. As you can see, the plantain is packed with beneficial agents for the skin and, in addition, has allantoin, which promotes skin healing. You may have heard about allantoin as it is often a key ingredient in skin healing creams.
Plantain Can Be Used For the Following:
- Spider, mosquito, or any other bug bites
- Bee or wasp stings
- Eczema
- Psoriasis
- Diaper rash
- Sunburn
The best plantain to use is the plantain that is not treated with pesticides. If you have a local forest or clean park, try picking plantain there; otherwise, you can buy dried and clean plantain on the Internet. Herbal stores are also a good starting point.
Once you have picked or bought some high-quality and pesticide-free plantain leaves, you can make your own plantain salve.
For approximately 1 cup, you will need the following:
- 1 cup plantain leaves, chopped
- 1 ½ cups olive oil or melted and cooled coconut oil
- 1 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon grated beeswax
- Tea tree oil, not more than 1 teaspoon (optional)
Related: How To Make Tea Tree Oil To Treat Infections
Equipment:
- Heatproof jar
- Sterile gauze
How to Make Plantain Salve:
#1. If harvesting leaves, make sure you harvest on a dry and sunny day.
#2. Clean leaves from any dirt with a dry cloth, and discard any leaves with color changes or spots. Use only healthy leaves.
#3. Chop leaves or grind in a food processor.
#4. Place the leaves in a heatproof jar and cover with the desired oil, olive or coconut.
#5. The leaves must be submerged in oil completely.
#6. Process the plantain and oil mixture until smooth. Make sure you do not over blend because you may end up with tiny pieces of plantain in your salve. The plantain may get too “shredded” and just pass through the gauze.
#7. Cover the jar with a piece of cheesecloth or gauze, and secure the gauze with a band.
#8. Place a kitchen towel in your slow cooker.
#9. Place the jar inside the cooker and fill with water so the water covers about half of the jar.
#10. Set to LOW and cook, covered for 12–24 hours. The key is to infuse the oil with plantain compounds.
#11. If needed, add more water but warm water, not cold.
#12. Place a piece of large gauze over your bowl. Secure the gauze with a large rubber band.
#13. Pour the oil into the gauze, and let it drain.
#14. Press any undrained plantain mixture to drain any remaining oil.
#15. Melt the beeswax over a double boiler.
#16. Stir the beeswax into the plantain oil, and add tea tree oil at this point, if using.
#17. If your beeswax hardens, set the bowl over a double boiler and stir until melted.
#18. Pour the salve into a DRY jar and allow to cool.
#19. Do not close until it reaches room temperature.
#20. Once cold, put a lid on the jar.
#21. Store in a cold and dry place.
NOTE: If you do not have a slow cooker or crock pot to use, you can infuse it another way!
- Just grind the dry leaves and submerge them in the oil. Place aside for 4–6 weeks in a dry place.
- Strain and add beeswax, as described above.
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Very interesting and informative article!
I will give this a try.
Also, I quit using those herbicide products a long time ago to encourage grow of plants such as these.
If I need to remove a plant I either dig it up and or salt it down, that works good.
Could you not just make a paste of the chopped leaves, and apply that to the skin?
Yes A.E. that is the proper way to do it. This article is killing all the healing of plantain by over processing.
Thanks. I appreciate your how to messages.
You are doing it wrong.
Wendy Sue: Rather than just saying: “You are doing it wrong,” why not write a post the describes the correct way to create the concoction. That would be more helpful than just a flat “WRONG”. Then followers of this list would have two alternative methods of achieving the same result. You might also indicate what you think is wrong with the article and on what you base your opinion. All of that would be far more helpful. Try not to be insulting in your post if you do present one. Reasonable minds can differ and as my grandmother used to say, “There is more than one way to skin a cat.”
Don’t know why she was into skinning cats. To the best of my recollection, I don’t remember her ever wearing furs, let alone cat fur.
Speaking of car fur, there is a book out on how to make felt out of cat fur. I suppose it would be helpful for making felt from any type of soft fur such as rabbit fur. It was written by a Japanese lady who, in my opinion, had far too much leisure time. It is in correct English so doesn’t need translation. Amazon carries it.
I love my kitties but, sad to say, in the old days young fellers (not me!) were known to practice their skinning and tanning using cat hides. In fact I remember a comment on here a while back from a feller who noted that cat brains are good for tanning hide. A well tanned cat hide with medium length fur is silkier than rabbit fur, four of them would make a pretty nice pair of gloves.
PETA has no idea how much more pet friendly we are now in Texas compared to the old days…
Love your article and thanks for the recipe. I friend just gave me some mullein. Happy to add it to my garden. I love weeds
Next time provide a picture of the plant in the ground
If this is not a proper method to make the salve, can someone tell me how they do it? I’m just learning and want to make the most effective remedies that I can.
I make a great plantain salve. It is also a drawing salve for splinters, etc.
PIck plantain leaves and let wilt for a couple of hours. Pack leaves in a pint jar and fill jar with olive oil. sit jar in a windowsill to ‘ solar’ infuse for 2 weeks. Shake jar daily. Strain out the herbs. for each cup of herbal oil use 1/4 cup of beeswax. Heat until beeswax melts and pour into jars. I use 2 oz jars and 2 pints jars of plantain will fill ten 2 oz jars. I also add a few drops of tea tree oil to oil after it is melted for a little bit of antibiotic properties. I hope this helps.
If your plantain salve is a drawing salve for splinters, it could also serve as a poultice for infections in a world without antibiotics.
I use Ichthammol ointment for minor infections. It is a petroleum based ointment which smells and looks like like tar. The Chumash Indians along the coast of SoCal used crude oil tars for poultices. The Santa Barbara coast has many crude oil tar seeps and that’s where the Chumash found the tars to use. I would guess that ichthammol ointment is just a cleaned up version of crude oil tar.
The tar seeps is why I find all the hoopla out here about oil spills so amusing. Long before there were oil wells in this region it was replete with crude oil seeps where the oil was coming up out of the ground naturally. It still does in many areas. Not to mention that California probably burns more petroleum products than the other 49 states combined but heaven forbid we produce oil from our abundant sources still in the ground.
Well, sorry about the political diatribe. I will pick up my soap box and steal away into the night.
This is pretty much the way I make my plantain salve also. It works quite well.
I used to make salve for my mother our Dr who used herbals with a great deal of success…. picked the fresh best leaves and then used pure crisco shortening and fried the leaves until crispy …. usually a 5 gallon bucket full… smelled like okra cooking… not high heat but just enough to crisp…. cooking leaves till the crisco was a beautiful green color. Keep in fridge and apply liberally… Mom would bruise when you looked at her from treatments for temporal arterilitus. This always worked wonders.
beeper: Thanks for taking the time to write your recipe. It’s appreciated. We now have three different recipes for the readers of this list to choose from. That’s what makes this list so useful, when readers set down their real life, hands on experiences for others to benefit from.
My stepdaughter loves this plant. She uses it on bruises and as a poultice on open sores. It makes a good draw salve, as well, is fermented with cream. If you have livestock around, forget having it. they’ll gnaw it to the mud. It’s too dry here for it, but we have aloes growing all over. niio
Can anyone tell me how to use the plantain seeds? I’m told they will help with high cholesterol don’t know if that’s dried seeds or fresh.
https://www.drugs.com/npc/plantain.html I didn’t see anything like that, but we avoid clogged arteries by not eating gluten. Gluten is one of the worse things in our foods, today. niio
I have made Plantain Salve for 40 years only it only has:
a small container of Crisco and a grocery sack of fresh plantain leaves!
Heat Crisco to hot –like for french frying, in a pot with a lid. Add a handful of leaves and cover. When through popping use tongs and remove leaves. Continue like this till oil changes from clear to yellowish green. and let cool down and put in containers. Store in refrigerator or in a cool dark place.
I have used this for all bites, stings, cuts, scrapes, etc. it is my families favorite!
Theanna Benefiel, DD, PhD, HHP, RBT
If you want to try the longer process as I did, simple chop leaves or tear them into pieces about 1/2 cup place into a glass bottle use coconut or grape seed oil and place in a brown paper bag on your window or where you can get about 6 – 8 hours of sun for about 6 weeks and that’s it. No fuss, but if you are in a hurry then use the stove.