I’m always so excited when the first days of summer are upon us as it heralds the season of St. John’s Wort and the steady foraging days ahead me and my labradoodle, Noah. In fact, the very first photo on our home page is a field of St. John’s wort located within a 10 minute drive from our little city.

European’s brought this herb over to be employed as a powerful healer of wounds, bruises, burns, sprains, and muscle pain. Used as an infused oil, salve or poultice, it helps ease pain, swelling and inflammation associated with many injuries that affect the skin and muscles and its antiseptic properties help allay infection in wounds and burns. St. John’s Wort also helps soothe the pain associated with damaged nerves and neuralgia and is helpful for painful sciatica, shingles and rheumatism. It can help restore nerve sensation in nerves damaged by traumatic injury or other causes. In fact, St. John’s Wort is known as “arnica for the nerves” due to it’s strong ability to repair nerves.

If you are wanting to identify this plant in the wild, it’s main telltale characteristic is the red stain that it will leave on your fingers if you rub the flowers between them and the leaves, if held up to the sun will show small perforations in the leaf to let the light through.