Dogwood medicine

    

Red-osier Dogwood 

      Here as part of our study together, we will be talking about Cornaceae plants, dogwood family plants, which have been little used in western herbalism in recent history.  We will be exploring some traditional eclectic uses, ethnobotanical historic uses, and current TCM uses for the use of the fleshy berry of the Asiatic species. 
     

Bunchberry Cornus unalaschkensis

We will be looking at endemic species in the rocky mountain west and pacific northwest. We will take several breaks and also go into the field to look at how this plant presents in the wild, some harvesting considerations and my hope is that you can make a personal connection, a  personal contact with these important medicinal herbs which are seldom mentioned in modern herbalism today. As part of this seminar will be using some techniques I have been working with to experience these plants on a one to one basis. There’s quite a few ticks and mosquitoes out now and you may want to use the mix I showed you earlier made with essential oils and plants growing here. We will not be gathering any plants from this location, except for your notebooks and the exercise portion. 

     Cornus sericea, Red-osier dogwood, kinnikinnick, red twig dogwood, red willow, Creek dogwood, Family Cornaceaea, Dog wood family. Formerly called Cornus stolonifera, 

     Cornus means horn or antler, sericea comes from the latin sericatus- which means silky, describing the fine silky hairs found on the under side of the leaves. leaves and young twigs, stolonifera refers to bearing stolons, running stems, its lower stems that grow upright and when the branches bend down they grow roots where they touch the soil. Osier is a word for willows whose branches are used for making baskets or wicker furniture. Kinnikinnik an Algonquian, eastern tribe word, refers to its use in smoking mixtures, the dried bark mixed with leaves from Arctostaphylos uva-ursi, bear-berry, raspberry leaves and tobacco. In the journals of Lewis and Clark from 1806, “ Since their arrival at the mouth of the Columbia river (Portland) almost daily rains had drenched the men…their meat spoiled, some means of stretching their tobacco, dispatched two men to the open lands near the Ocian for Sackacome, which we make use of to mix with our tobacco to smoke, which has an agreeable flavour.” Lewis and Clark sent a sample of the kinnikinnick to then president Jefferson. 

Cornus sericea underside 

     Red osier dogwood is found in the northeast and in the western US from Arizona, where it’s found sporadically in higher mountain areas, as a kind of high forest woodland plant, more due to the predominant dry nature of the ecoystem, rather a quality of the plant.  Northward  much more common presenting as a lower elevation riparian plant growing in dense thickets in mid to north Cascadia, hence it’s name red-willow. 

     Be grateful for your privilege brought by spirit for where you are at here near the border, going free in a low population density area, on a property provided free and clear by spirit for western herbalism study.  I have seen that time and time, repeated again and again, duplicated in so many people’s lives, especially right now, more than ever before, land and learning situations drops into people’s hands when they are focused on this real work. I have to believe it’s being grateful for your privilege, celebrating that privilege and using it to advance your people’s well being, and enter a positive sphere based on love where you do no harm.
       

Dwarf dogwood habitat

      Here it is growing as a riparian plant, much like a willow, hence the name red-willow, as the stems and peeled bark can be used similarly to the willow Salix species for basketry. 
It grows about 7 feet tall with distinctive red stems that will help you identify it in winter. The leaves turn a deep red to orange depending where it is growing and the bark tends to redden also contrasting with the snow. It is a deciduous perennial.  It’s leaves are opposite, oval shaped, twice as long as wide, about 3 inches long, deeply veined with a center vein, 7-9 secondary veins begin at the center vein and run parallel to each other converging at the pointed tip. Flowers come in late spring, they are white, at the brach top end in flat cyme clusters, the individual flowers are 4-petaled and resemble tiny, tiny miniature Cornus florida, flowering dogwood flowers. 

     Another widely distributed western species of the Cornaceae family plant valuable for medicine in the area, Cornus unalaschkensis, bunchberry, our dwarf dogwood, has quite a different presentation. It’s range is Cascadia north and into eastern Russia, a circumboreal species. It is about six inches tall, a perennial, the most common of the dwarf dogwoods. Leaves are in 4’s or 6’s appearing in a whorl, but if you look closely they are opposite. Bunchberry spreads by woody rhizomes and is a plant of deep shade, often boggy wet moist deep shade northwest forest. The leaves are shiny dark green above, lighter green below, 2-3 inches long, egg shaped, with arching veins. The flower is a single appearing to have 4 white spade shaped petals, which are bracts, with small flowers in the center, which will mature to a tight bunch of 5-9 bright red berries with a single seed. There is a similar eastern species of dwarf dogwood C. Canadensis growing in similar wet forest conditions back east. 

Bunchberry patch

     Cornus unalaschkensis was used by the Abnaki as a analgesic, the Algonquin for colds and stomach aches, for fevers, all native peoples as a food berry, and by most in smoking mixtures. 

     The impotance of bunchberry as a folk medicine is due to the aspirin-like effects acting via a different pathway, the iridoid glycosides, corine, corvine, cornic acid, and other constituents. The dried berries have properties similar to TCM Shan Zhu Yu. The whole plant dried as a tea has anti-inflammatory, antipyretic, anodyne, antispasmotic, astringent, hypotensive, tonic qualities. To use the dried gathered leaf and portion of root, you may add 4-6 rounded teaspoons to a quart of water as a cold infusion, or 1 rounded teaspoon in warm, hot but not boiling water and drink, up to 3 times per day.

     As the mid 19^thcentury eclectics were centered in the original 13 colonies, they used mainly eastern woodland plants. Flowering dogwood grows from about the mason-dixon line into the  deep south territory. From eclectic medicinal handbooks written in the mid to late 1800’s Cornus stolonifera also known as C. sericea, was considered a substitute, replacement for the dried bark of Cornus florida, flowering dogwood which previously was in the official USP formulary. Flowering dogwood itself was a substitute for Peruvian bark, or cinchona bark, Cinchona offinalis. 

    So let’s look at Cinchona and get a picture of what the eclectics were attempting to approximate. Cinchona is a plant native to tropical rain forests in South America. Cinchona, also known as quinine bark, was used as an anti-fever agent for the treatment and prevention of malaria. Later the drug hydroxychloroquine was synthesized from chloroquine which in turn was delevoped from cinchona bark. Malaria an Italian word for ‘bad air’ was a European epidemic in the 1600’s which killed Pope Gregory XV in 1623, during the conclave to elect the new pope 8 cardinals died, and many Catholic church officials. The Vatican itself was in lock down for a time. Even the new pope pope Urban VIII caught the dieease coming down with fever, chills, jaundice and body aches. Jesuits active in South America at the time brought back cinchona bark and Urban VIII survived. At roughly the same time Oliver Cromwell the man responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Catholics in Ireland also caught maleria but refused to take the Catholic Jesuits, Jesuit’s powder remedy and died. 

Dwarf dogwood

     Malaria was long a scourge of Rome, and the Italians believed it was caused by ‘mal aria’, bad air arising from fetid swamps. Their explanation is not far from the truth as the disease is spread by mosquitoes carrying a parasite, plasmodium spread by mosquito bites. Quinine bark, and refined medicine from the plant was the only known treatment for the next three hundred years. Quinine was not synthesized until 1944. Even though synthetic drugs like chloroquine initially were more effective in treating malaria, by the 1960’s Plasmodium falciparum developed resistance to the synthetic drugs while quinine had to be used again in parts of the world where malaria remains a health issue.  Quinine is still used today in quinine or tonic water for cocktails. Cinchona bark contains 5% quinine. 

     Comparing the dried bark in my hand to Cornus florida’s description. It is visually the same with a bitter astringent taste. Dogwood bark was used, “many years ago as a antiperiodic  in intermittent fever.”, for malaria-like periodic circular fevers, ebbing and flowing in a diurnal cycle, cooler in the morning with rising fever later in the day peaking towards bedtime.  That is certainly one possibility for you to use in your herbal tool kit. Besides the pain relieving qualities we’ll talk about later with bunchberry, periodic fever is a good use of red osier dogwood.  

     Ethnobotanical accounts was that it was used both internally and externally. Internally to treat diarrhea, fevers, externally for skin problems. Whenever we have an astrigent herb, that tightens the tissue this is a legitimate pathway you’ll want to explore. It’s important to note that multiple accounts of the fresh bark indicate it used as an emetic, while the bark dried as an infusion is less likely to have this property. So with the dogwoods we have here focus on the dried bark as a tea or cold infusion rather than a fresh plant tincture. In addition, as said before, was a kinnikinnick, or blended smoking mixture. You should try it that way, we’ll try a smoking blend at break, for those interested. The young upright stalks like willow, as fibre, cordage,  to make baskets and dream catchers, with its distinctive red color making the weave interesting, often alternating with willow.  In addition the dried berries were eaten mixed with other more flavorable berries, and as in Chinese TCM, in Asiatic varieties considered a tonic. 

Riparian Osier  Dogwood

      As we have seen consistently in mid 19^thcentury eclectics they often used native American herbs, usually from east coast forests to attempt to duplicate another plant used for a particular constellation of symptoms, in this case periodic low grade intermittent fever, as a quinine like compound. In this case both cinchona bark and southeast flowering dogwood with the end plant Cornus sericea, here in abundance in the American mountain west and Cascadia. Oftentimes there are dead ends, lack of reliable research, and one can often hope at best that in time others will take up the same task with better results for the future.  

      Dr William H. Cook writing in his Physio-Medical Dispensatory, 1869, wrote of Cornus sericea in this way: “The bark is similar to that of cornus florida, but partakes more of the characters of a pure astringent, and less of those of a tonic. It is also more stimulating than the other dogwoods. It expends a considerable influence upon the uterus, and is of service in atonic conditions of that organ. …It has been commended in dropsy and as an antiseptic, but its powers would be limited under such circumstances. “William Cook writing in 1869 does not mention Red osier dogwood’s use in periodic intermittent fever, and it seems to have dropped into a realm of folk herb use after that.

      Maude Grieve writing in her 1931, A modern Herbal, wrote regarding Red-osier dogwood,:” The active properties are similar to those found in Peruvian Bark, except that there is more gum mucilage and extractive matter and less resin quinine and tannin. It is tonic astringent and slightly stimulant, used in periodical and typhoid fever. Taken internally it increases the strength and frequency of the pulse, elevating the temperature of the body. It should be used in the dried state, the fresh bark being likely to upset the stomach.” 

       In my research there is no evidence that any of the North American Cornus spp have any quinine content. Yet the plant does have active plant constituents such as iridoid glycosides, corine, corvine, cornic acid, flavanoids, fumaric acid, tannins. Iridoid glycosides are regarded as a group of compounds that function as defense chemicals against eaters of the plants such as insects and mammals and against pathogens. Iridoid glycosides is the bitter taste in Cornus sericea. Iriod glycosides also have an anti-inflammatory effect and are present in plants like African Devil’s claw, Harpagophytum procumbens, figwort, proven effective in dealing with pain due to arthritic joint conditions.  

CORNAC

     Two common points stated by all sources are, that active plant constituent corine and others present are harmed by intense heat and secondly the fresh dried bark is emetic. So using the herb is by cold infusion of dried bark, roughly one half an ounce, 14grams or so of dried bark to a quart of water, left overnight in a quart jar, 3-6 oz of the strained liquid drunk 1-2 three times per day. Begin with less and experiment how it works, sometimes less is more.

     Regarding the dwarf dogwood, Cornus Canadensis now in the process of being renamed to Cornus unalaschkensis, or bunch berry contains corine, corvine, cornic acid and compounds have mild salicin like anti-inflammatory effects and according to Michael Moore from field notes, “Corvine is not as strong as salicylic acid, and it has a different transport mechanism in the blood stream. It’s a good anti- inflammatory for a person who’s become allergic to salicylates. It’s also a lot safer than other alternatives. The dried herb could be used as a simple tea. Each person's response to {comic acid} is different. A rounded teaspoon per cup might be needed to give the equivalent of one aspirin.”

      Finally, western herbalists are beginning to use the fruit as in Chinese traditional medicine TCM, an Asiatic Cornus officinalis is known as Shan Zhu Yu, is widely used as an herbal medicine. Cornus officinalis is a deciduous shrub and the fruits are used primarily. Considered an herb that stabilizes and binds  to reduce heavy menstrual bleeding, and unusually active secretions, sweating, urination, and in men premature ejaculation. It is used with other tonic herbs in formulas, as stopping or inhibiting secretions could be dangerous long term. The fruit without the seed, is antibacterial, antifungal, astringent and tonic. The fleshy pulp is used for the treatment of arthritis, fever, and many ailments. Good journey with this plant, and as always...share

William H. Cook MD, The Physio-medical Dispensatory, William Cook 1869

Maude Grieve, A Modern Herbal, 1931

Charles W. Kane, Medicinal Plants of the Western Mountain States, Lincoln Town Press, 2020

Charles F. Millspaugh, American Medicinal Plants, John Voston and company, 1892

Michael Moore, Medicianl Plants of the Mountain West, Museum of New Mexico Press, 2003

Michael Moore, Field Notes

Joseph P. Remington and Horatio C Wood, The Dispensatory of the United States, J.P. Lippincott Company, 1907 edition

Mark Turner and Ellen Kuhlman, Trees and Shrubs of the Pacific Northwest, Timber Press Field Guide, 2014