Jakki, where did you get this information?

Pieter

It was an article in this week's garden newsletter which we are not able to link to or mention in this Forum due to some sort of spam problem.

The article was by LariAnn Garner and is called Cutting Edge Plant Science: A cure for your plant's viral headache.

I've read quite a few articles by Ms Garner. She has a Bachelor's degree in Botany and Master of Agriculture in Plant Physiology, and she does plant research, so I think her credentials and experimental methods are solid! Unfortunately there are no references cited in this particular article. The science is totally beyond me, so I am unable to make any sort of judgement. It does sound intriguing though!

Wonder if Dr. L and his researchers have any thoughts!

Jakki

You take the aspirin,when you find out your plant has HVX. Lol! Phil

a hosta club newsletter???

ken

I, too, tried to link to that website to share a useful photo and was informed that it is not allowed. Interested folks can find the article easily using a search engine - I didn't have any concerns about spam, security, etc. accessing the site.

The article mentions that the active ingredient in aspirin is found in the bark of willow trees... and that as far back as 500 BCE, people knew that chewing the bark of the willow would help a headache.

I have wondered for most of a lifetime... how in the heck would anybody ever figure that out. I mean... can you imagine living a simple hunter-gatherer life... coming home after a hard day chasing musk oxen or somesuch, finding yourself with a headache... and saying to yourself "you know, I just wonder if chewing on the bark of this tree might help this pain in my head..."??? I just can't come up with a scenario that leads to this discovery!

We only know what we know. People in past times or in other societies might have thought and/or will think differently in the future than we know here in the small group of hosta people in the US at this time.

Those people in the past had no internet and hostas and nothing else to do and certainly will have had their own thousands of years of history of finding medicines in nature. Now I know to save more money for buying hostas, instead of buying Aspirin chew on willows, and get free vitamins too.

Very interesting..... Thanks !