Feverfew

Overview

Feverfew is a small, cheerful-looking plant with daisy flowers and a smell that is anything but cheerful — sharp, bitter, and insistent, the kind of smell that clears a head or turns a stomach depending on the person. It was grown in cottage gardens as a ward against illness and planted near beehives on the belief that bees disliked it enough to stay close to home. In the twentieth century it attracted clinical attention as a preventive for migraine — not a treatment once the pain has started, but a daily supplement that reduces the frequency and severity of attacks. The research has been consistent enough that it appears in mainstream medical guidance alongside the caveat that you must not stop taking it abruptly, or the headaches will return worse than before. The plant that keeps its hold on you even when you try to leave it.

Botanical Notes

A bushy, aromatic perennial reaching 25–60cm with pale yellow-green, pinnately lobed leaves and numerous small daisy-like flower heads — white ray florets surrounding a yellow disc — from June to September. Strongly and unpleasantly aromatic when the leaves are bruised. Self-seeds freely; common in gardens, walls, roadsides, and disturbed ground throughout Europe and North America. The active constituents are sesquiterpene lactones, primarily parthenolide, which inhibit platelet aggregation and prostaglandin synthesis — the proposed mechanism for its antimigraine effect.

Lore & History

The name feverfew is a corruption of febrifuge — fever-disperser — which tells you what it was originally used for before migraines became its primary reputation. In the seventeenth century, Nicholas Culpeper assigned it to Venus and recommended it for headache, dizziness, and disorders of the womb. It was hung in doorways to ward off disease and moths. In the 1970s, a Welsh doctor's wife began eating fresh feverfew leaves daily for her migraines on the recommendation of a coal miner who swore by it, her improvement was dramatic enough to prompt a clinical trial. The subsequent trials were positive. One of the more unusual chains of evidence in botanical medicine.

Warnings