Mullein

Overview

Mullein announces itself. The first year it is a flat rosette of enormous, pale, densely woolly leaves — soft as old flannel, silver in low light. The second year a spike rises, sometimes to two metres, packed with yellow flowers that open a few at a time across the length of a long summer. It grows in the waste places: roadsides, quarry edges, railway embankments, the rubble at the foot of old walls. It is impossible to mistake and impossible to overlook, which is perhaps why it has accumulated so many names. Aaron's rod. Hag's taper. Blanket leaf. Torchwort. Each name a different use, a different relationship, a different century reaching for the same plant.

Botanical Notes

A biennial forming a large, flat basal rosette of grey-green, densely woolly leaves in the first year — leaves may reach 50cm in length. Second-year flower spike is tall, erect, and densely flowered with five-petalled yellow blooms and prominent orange-tipped stamens. Found throughout Europe, Asia, and North America on dry, disturbed, well-drained soils in full sun. Naturalised worldwide. The woolly leaf surface functions as a deterrent to crawling insects and a moisture trap in dry conditions.

Lore & History

The dried flower stalks, dipped in tallow, were used as torches from Roman times onward — hence torchwort, and the more sinister hag's taper, the light by which the cunning folk were said to work. Roman soldiers reportedly used them; witches were alleged to as well. The leaves, thick and soft as felt, were pressed into shoes as insulation, used as wicks, and laid against the chest in poultices for coughs. In Appalachian folk medicine, smoking dried mullein leaf was — and remains — a recognised remedy for lung complaints, a practice that modern research has treated with more sympathy than expected.

Warnings