FREE: Yerba Santa - "Holy Herb"

The listing, Yerba Santa - "Holy Herb" has ended.

Yerba Santa is an aromatic evergreen perennial shrub, native to California and Northern Mexico, that grows to 2 - 4' high & wide on dry hillsides. It was used medicinally by Native America healers for many centuries, and then taken up by the Spanish settlers, who gave it its current name, meaning "Holy Herb." Its other names include Mountain Balm, Bear's Weed, Gum Plant, Consumptive Weed, and Sacred Herb.

Herbalists consider it an excellent herbal remedy for chronic respiratory ailments: it is used as an expectorant used to treat coughs and congestion, as well as aiding in loosening and expelling phlegm. It dilates bronchial tubes, and thus is used to ease asthma and allergy attacks. A tea, tincture or syrup is typically made from the leaves, sometimes including the flowers. The Native Californians used it (sometimes mixed it with mullein) to make a lung-healing smoking mixture, and they chewed the leaves to ward off thirst.
Yerba Santa is also considered to be valuable for healing cuts and bruises, and to treat aches and rheumatism (usually in the form of a tincture or extract made from the leaves).

It is also an excellent landscape shrub requiring little maintenance and low water. It is evergreen and has a lovely bloom: the delicate whitish lavender flowers are pollinated by butterflies.

Grows in dry decomposed granite, sand, clay loam low in organic content, and likes to be well drained. Its tough, resinous leaves holds and conserves its water so that it can thrive in a hot dry environment. Use it as an informal hedge, a low screen, a foundation plant, or as a contrast in color and form in a cactus garden or xeriscape.

USDA hardiness zones 6A - 10B

The winner of this auction will receive about a half-teaspoon of seeds (they're small!)