Desert Cotton, Gossypium thurberi
Gossypium thurberi, Malvaceae Family (Mallow family), a deciduous, perennial desert bushy shrub, growing up to 6-7 feet tall, occasionally in woody thickets on rocky hillsides in north zone sonoran desert to roughly 4500ft elevation. https://youtu.be/6sP8enDRLFk
The flowers are followed by round green seed capsules, they remain on the branches through winter after the leaves fall and turn dark brown, waving in the wind. The deciduous leaves turn a deep red to maroon as autumn progresses to winter in the low desert. The shrub makes an excellent xeriscape, tall garden plant offering late summer fall blooms for warm desert mojave, sonoran locals. It can be mixed with tronadora, gobernadora, thornless nopal for a medicinal xeriscape garden.
This native desert cotton, Gossypium thurberi, is related to the four Gossypium spp, G. hirsutum central America, G. barbadense South America, G. arboreum India and Pakistan, and G. herbaceum the Levant Arabian cotton, that were used in the old and new worlds for cotton fibre and cloth dating back 5000 years to the earliest bouts of history. Since all people wear clothing, and most of it is cotton, our history worldwide, for the last 200 years is intricately linked to the buying and selling of cotton. Who buys and sells the cotton grown, who owns the cotton fields, who makes the cloth, who sells the cloth, who picks the cotton, the technology of cotton picking, the technology of fabric, who makes the cotton into fabric, who buys the clothing and so on. Many of the rah rah flag waver history stories throughout the world are nothing but little side line story tales of the 3 C’s, cotton, copper and cattle. The two varieties of new world cotton from the Americas make up the majority of cotton grown today throughout the world.
Such a dynamic plant that literally goes cradle to grave, from babies first diaper, boxers, briefs and socks, to the shirt on your back also has an intimate history as an herbal medicine. People have used the plants that grow around them for medicine. As a mallow family plant, cotton has many mallow principles fine tuned in its own species. Desert cotton root when harvested fresh, in a 1:2 ratio in high grain alcohol makes a dark red tincture that is reliable for delayed menstrual period pain, perhaps with an antispasmodic such as silk tassel, or viburnum, chewed with a slice of dried angelica root. Likewise similar for painful fibroid episodes cotton root tincture with red root. Desert cotton root tincture is used by skilled midwives during the delivery after the water breaks in first births to encourage uterine contractions.
Desert cotton root is an oxytocin synergist catalyst and was also used locally in the southwest to address difficult, interrupted orgasm which can be due to vaginal dryness which can occur in perimenopausal or emotional issues combined with ocotillo root bark tincture. Those herbalists who work face to face, one on one with specific people, who regularly deal with women may want to integrate desert cotton into specific personalised, women’s formulas that address various components of the hormonal cycle, in specific people they know. The caveat of desert cotton root tincture is that it is a potent first trimester abortifacient, and was used as such, absolutely contraindicated in pregnancy.
The eclectic medical tradition in America, mainly in Ohio, was active from 1830 to 1939. Writers like Harvey Wickes Felter MD, John Uri Lloyd, Finley Elingwood, knew about, prescribed and wrote about desert cotton as a plant medicine. Unfortunately the eclectic tradition was considered vitalist. According to big pharma medi police state story time, vitalism is a refuted belief system and practice. So all the recorded plant medicines of the eclectics likewise are refuted. They come up from time to time, when convenient in so-called wholistic health talk. Where the plants are mentioned in a kind of historical box, stuff third world non-white, native american, asian, black, do. Herbs are stuff people of color people do, anything but practical actual do-able stuff. And certainly not stuff your insurance money deducted from your paycheck can buy. So wholistic health talk is mostly ruse and elaborate erasure. Vitalism is the banned conspiracy. Let’s rewrite history to justify more pills, more dope, more pills, more of your so-called health care money being spent to fund the elite’s elaborate lifestyle.
Let’s look briefly at the first conspiracy theory principle of vitalism. That way whenever a clinger brings up, ‘Hey, I’m alive.’, you can label it conspiracy, danger stranger hate speech. The primary conspiracy of vitalism is the in your face observation that living things like people, human beings, for instance, are fundamentally different from non-living things. The first step in the vitalism rabbit hole is, you are alive. You can see what a danger this type of thinking is to people living in their safe space pods, eating bugs and thinking up pronouns. When in doubt, mask up! right?
Let’s go deeper into scary, if we could dehydrate the human body, and somehow isolate all the various minerals, chemicals and compounds, vitalism says there is some kind of force, or law that organises all those non-living chemical compounds into a self actualizing system that is a living human being. Imagine the masked person, behind the plexiglass barrier, viewed through your video screen, is alive, a living person, for reals! Again, remember the conspiracy is, you are alive. Vitalism observes you have a life force. Illness, dis-ease, is the imbalance of the life force. If you rigidly force, coerce, a human being to inhabit a mechanistic, science experiment laboratory pod lifestyle, you are going to deepen the imbalance of the life force. Life force is spirit. You are not a machine. Your brain is not a computer. You are fundamentally a wild system that spontaneously organises itself because the guiding framework of homeostasis is your identity. Our continued existence, the real work is to acquire, sustain and support the knowledge of herbal medicine within the vitalist tradition. Here are some descriptions of desert cotton root from the Eclectic Materia Medica. Work to sustain our tradition. Believe and do.
From Harvey Wickes Felter MD and John Uri Lloyd, Eclectic Materia Medica, 1917: “The bark of the root and the hairs of the seed of Gossypium herbaceum, Linné, and of other species of Gossypium (Nat. Ord. Malvaceae). An Asiatic plant extensively cultivated, especially in southern United States. Dose, 5 to 60 grains.
Common Names: (1) Cotton-Root Bark; (2) Cotton, Cotton Wool.
Specific Indications.—(Uterine inertia; preparations of fresh root-bark—large doses.) Tardy menstruation with backache and dragging pelvic pain; fullness and weight in the bladder, with difficult micturition; sexual lassitude with anemia; hysteria, with pelvic atony and anemia.
Action and Therapy.—External. Absorbent cotton is of mechanical use only in practice. A cotton jacket is preferred by many to poultices and magmas for use in acute lung diseases. It maintains an even protection from changes of temperature, and slight moisture usually accumulates under it, thus making it serve the purpose, without the weight and dangers, of the poultice. Cotton is widely used in surgical practice for sponging and dressings, to take up secretions, to protect painful surfaces in burns and scalds, and to prevent the ingress of atmospheric microbic invasion. It is a comforting application to rheumatic joints, usually being applied over some oleaginous application. Upon raw surfaces oils or some lubricant should be first applied and then the parts encased in cotton. If allowed to become stiff and hard it acts as any other foreign body. Cotton is used for vaginal tampons, but they should be removed after a few hours use, as they become exceedingly foul and veritable hotbeds of infection. For packing wounds and cavities and similar surgical uses gauze is preferred to cotton. Cotton is a good medium by which to apply antiseptic and dusting powders.
Internal. Fresh cotton-root bark is emmenagogue. It is useful in tardy menstruation, with much backache and dragging pelvic pain. Owing to its undoubted power upon the uterine musculature it is of value in uterine subinvolution and is asserted to have reduced the size of fibroids. It probably acts much in the same manner as ergot, though far less powerfully. It has the advantage, however, of being practically non-poisonous. In uterine inertia during labor it is said to act well, though it is seldom brought into requisition. The reputed use of the decoction as an abortifacient by the cotton-district negresses is common knowledge. Fortunately the fresh root is not everywhere available, if it really possesses ecbolic properties, for old bark is said to be valueless for any purpose.
Webster employs gossypium in hysteria in children and adults. He reports it efficient in screaming children, morose women, and girls with uncontrollable laughter, as well as in those assuming muscular rigidity. These adult cases undoubtedly depend upon menstrual derangements.’....From Felter 1917, Eclectic Materiz Medica.
“Individuals of Spanish and Mexican descent in New Mexico have used a number of plants as emmenagogues and abortifacients. Of the plants used, cotton root bark (Gossypium sp.), inmortal (Asclepias capricornu Woodson), poleo chino (Hedeoma oblongifolia (Gray) Heller), rue (Ruta graveolens L.), wormseed (Chenopodium ambrosioides L.), and three species of Artemesia seem to be used most widely. Of these, the cotton root bark, when used as an abortifacient, seems to exhibit the lowest toxicity. Rue is notable because of its use independently within different cultures, but may exhibit toxic side effects when used as an abortifacient.
Seven other plants are outlined on the basis of anecdotal and folkloric reports.”
References more info
http://www.birth-institute.com/alternative-medicine-and-childbirth/cotton-root
A Modern Herbal, Maude Grieve, 1931 Great Britain excellent herbal information, published at start of great depression by Maude Grieve
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/232204/
https://botanical.com/botanical/mgmh/mgmh.html
Conway GA, Slocumb JC. Plants used as abortifacients and emmenagogues by Spanish New Mexicans. J Ethnopharmacol. 1979 Oct;1(3):241-61. doi: 10.1016/s0378-8741(79)80014-8. PMID: 232204.
Harvey Wickes Felter MD and John Uri Lloyd, 1917, The Eclectic Materia Medica
https://we.riseup.net/assets/231618/herbalabortion.pdf
