Goldenrod: A brief monograph, a love letter.
The sun hangs high overhead, blanketing your shoulders with a radiating warmth. The trees around you burst with a green so vibrant and ripe, just beginning to take on the same golden hue as the August sky. Sumac horns wave in the wind, some seeds glowing red, some beginning to fade as they’re consumed by bugs. This area is lush and consuming and you make your way down a narrow path, overgrown with grasses and raspberry branches reaching their toothed arms out to your ankles. You can feel moisture in the air, that thick atmosphere of late summer. Smells like dry dirt and a plump atmosphere ready to burst with rain at any moment.
And all around you, a low droning that you can almost feel inside of your chest. What is that? As you look up you see a low hanging cloud of bees and wasps and other pollinators hurriedly gather from the feathery stalks of goldenrod. Ecstatically stuffing their legs with tiny yellow beads, drunk on the nectar, bursting and full and happy but never sated.
Look up at a clearing and straight to the horizon – you see nothing but tiny, lacey flower clusters, lightly grazing each other stem to stem in the gentle breeze. You feel suddenly strengthened, standing tall as you strain to see the end of the field. It goes on forever, and as you lengthen your spine you notice your breath deepen, your chest expanding fully and the breath filling you up all the way to the back of your head. You’ve just felt the power of goldenrod.
At one to five feet in height, goldenrod is unmistakable. Its yellow feathery flowers resemble ragweed, but in fact are used to correct the problems that ragweed creates. Taken as a daily tonic, goldenrod has been found to ease irritating allergies by working to reduce histamine responses. It also helps to tone the tissues of the respiratory and urinary systems.
Solidago – to make whole. This is a key feature of goldenrod. When used topically, its vulnerary action can help to bring tissues back together and assist with wound healing. It’s also a great anti-inflammatory for muscle soreness. It also has specific indications for bronchitis with excessive mucus, and gargling a strong goldenrod tea can help if you’ve lost your voice.
The tea also aids with digestion because of its bitterness and carminative actions.
I have heard of folks using goldenrod to help overcome UTIs with great success, and especially as a urinary tonic after the infection has passed, when things still feel a little weak and inflamed. It can be used in the same way after any kind of illness, when the kidneys and other organs of elimination feel sluggish and like they could use some help. Goldenrod comes in to restore the tissues back to their glory.
Another incredibly helpful way of working with goldenrod is on the energetic level. My friend and fellow herbalist/witch, Britton Boyd of Archaic Honey, describes them as “standing on their own within a community”, reaching skyward with confidence in their self-expression even as they exist with others. This has been one of my favorite ways of working with goldenrod, especially as someone who often goes against the grain of mainstream culture. Goldenrod has a strong, sunny vibration that reminds us of the power we carry within us. This is especially important, noting the time of year it flowers in.
In late July through September, the flowering panicles give one deep stretch toward the sun before relaxing and toppling and becoming faded, fuzzy seeds. Then their energy drains downward to feed the rhizome, creating a web of shallow but intricate and interconnected roots in the winter. This mimics the energy within us in the same time of year, spending much of August quickly flitting about and fitting in as many last minute summer activities as possible before retreating inward. Among the other energetic indicators, goldenrod reminds us to keep a little piece of the light within us even during this dormant time.
Hold on to the sun, hold on to the self.
Further reading and resources for working with goldenrod:
Materia Medica Oracle Deck - a pocket-sized tool for divination and education.
Praxis of the Witch - a program for cultivating a daily witchcraft practice with monthly plant allies.
Easley, Thomas and Steven Horne. The Modern Herbal Dispensatory: A Medicine-Making Guide. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 2016
Grieve, Maud. A Modern Herbal. New York: Dover Publications, 1971