Tag: nerve tonic

Linden Tree Tea To Soothe Nerves

Linden Tree

The Botanical Name of the Linden Tree is  Tilia cordata. The Linden Tree is also known as Tiglio.

The flowers of the Linden Tree  are beautiful – lemon-cream in colour, and highly fragrant.  Many poems and songs have been written about the lovely Linden tree with its alluring fragrance and welcome shade.

Linden Tree flowers contain a valuable  essential oil.  Linden Tree flowers have been used for centuries to make a soothing herbal tea to calm frayed nerves. Linden Tea, and the essential oil,  have a mild sedative effect, and calm the emotions.

The main active ingredient in Linden Tree flower oil is farnesol.  This substance, as well as the flavanoids, gallic and catechnic tannins present in Linden Tree flowers, make the essential oil also very useful in the making of cosmetics.

Aubrey Hampton discusses the use of Linden Flower essential oil in his book called “What’s in Your Cosmetics?” In this book, he discusses both natural and synethetic ingredients, and of course, Linden Flowers are one of the healthful,  non-toxic, natural ingredients which are used in the making of some cosmetics.

Test Purity Of Water With Lovage Herb

Lovage Essential Oil

Levisticum officinale is the Botanical name of Lovage. Lovage is a sweet smelling and calming herb.  It has several common Folk names, some of which are:   Old English Lovage, Smellage, Smallage, and Maggi Herb.

All parts of Lovage contain medicinal properties.  The  volatile oil  of Lovage contains some well known substances which are used in cosmetics, such as:  angelic acid, phthalides, glucoside, gum and resins.

Lovage oil also contains Ligulin which is a colourant, and it is this Ligulin colourant which is the magic ingredient in our water-purity test.  I discovered this water test in Aubrey Hampton’s wonderful book “What’s In Your Cosmetics?”  This book was published in 1995 by Organica Press, Florida, USA.

Aubrey says that he uses Lovage Oil to test the purity of water.  He recommends dropping just one drop of lovage oil into the water to be tested.  The Ligulin component will cause the water to turn a bright crimson red if the water is pure.  If the water is impure at all, then the red will turn to blue.

I have not tried this formula out, but I should think that you would use only a small amount of water – say a quarter of a cup full.  Otherwise the Ligulin in the Lovage Oil may be too diluted to have an effect at all.

Of course, it will be necessary to purchase a pure essential oil of Lovage.  Any synthetic equivalent will not do.  But having purchased your Pure Essential Oil of Lovage, you could entertain your children with this  water-testing experiment.

Show them how it works yourself by dropping one drop into various types of water:  Try sea water to see what happens.  Try the  water from a near-by stream.  Try tap water, try rain water,  and try bottled water. Use the same volume of water for each experiment so that you can judge the colour differences.

Note:   Do not give the Lovage Oil to your children to play with, as Essential Oils can be very potent and should be kept away from children and guarded carefully.

Lovage  is used in Folk Medicine as a diuretic, a stomachic and an expectorant.  It is a common flavour enhancer in foods and drinks.  Because of its soothing and non-irritating effect, it is useful as a de-sensitizing agent for certain skin conditions.  It is supposed to be good for acne.

Its ability to soothe the skin make Lovage a valued cosmetic component.