Buckhorn

Parts Usually Used

Rootstock

Description of Plant(s) and Culture

Buckhorn brake is a perennial plant; the large, scaly rootstock is covered with matted fibers and often rises like a trunk up to a foot out of the ground. The pale green, bipinnate fronds have brown stalks and are ovate in outline; the oblong-elliptic pinnules are finely toothed. Sterile fronds are leafy only: fertile ones are topped by a tripinnate panicle of fertile pinnae which turn brownish in maturity and bear green spores.

The fruiting axis bears black hairs. Fruiting time is from April to June. Another variety: Cinnamon-colored fern or Cinnamon fern (O. cinnamomea) is a native North American fern which grows from Newfoundland to Minnesota and Florida, and west to New Mexico, from Mexico into South America, and also in Asia. Its pinnate sterile fronds, lanceolate to oblong-lanceolate in outline, grow on the outside, reaching 2-5 feet in height.

The bipinnate fertile fronds, 1-3 feet high, grow in the center, their pinnae contracted and bearing cinnamon-brown spore cases. This fern can be used like buckhorn brake, although it is said to be less effective. It can be boiled in milk to produce mucilage which is helpful for diarrhea.

Where Found

Grows in meadows and other moist areas, mostly in Europe, Great Britain, and Africa; a variety without hairs on the fruiting parts of the fronds grows in eastern North America.

Medicinal Properties

Mucilaginous, tonic

Legends, Myths and Stories

The mucilaginous extract from the rhizomes have in the past been a part of the druggists’ supply, but is now of doubtful value.

Uses

Historically, herbalists prepared a decoction of the plant for coughs, early stages of jaundice, and as a tonic for convalescents. The mucilage was traditionally made into an ointment for sprains, bruises, and wounds, or mixed with brandy as a rub for backache.

Bibliography

American Folk Medicine , by Clarence Meyer, Meyerbooks, publisher, PO Box 427, Glenwood, Illinois 60425, 1973 Culpeper’s Complete Herbal & English Physician: Updated With 117 Modern Herbs , by Nicholas Culpeper, Meyerbooks, publisher, PO Box 427, Glenwood, Illinois 60425, 1990, (reprint of 1814) The Herbalist Almanac , by Clarence Meyer, Meyerbooks, publisher, PO Box 427, Glenwood, Illinois 60425, copyright 1988, fifth printing, 1994 The Herb Book , by John Lust, Bantam Books, 666 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY.

copyright 1974. Old Ways Rediscovered , by Clarence Meyer, Meyerbooks, publisher, PO Box 427, Glenwood, Illinois 60425, published from 1954, print 1988 The Rodale Herb Book: How to Use, Grow, and Buy Nature’s Miracle Plants (An Organic gardening and farming book) , edited by William H. Hylton, Rodale Press, Inc. , 1974