Peach Flower, leaf, twig, bark, kernel

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Peach leaf

Overview

Qualities:

Energetics: Cooling, moistening

Primary Organ System Affinities: Upper GI, uterus, nervous system

Specific Indications: dryness, heat, irritability and tension in sensitive, emotionally brittle individuals with a tendency towards inflammatory conditions and hyperimmune conditions such as allergies.

It is always necessary to sedate heat and excitation and for this purpose no remedies surpass the rose family. Peach, a member of this clan, is particularly beneficial because it is cooling and moistening, a therapeutic action often needed since heat often causes dryness.

It was also used by the settlers, including the herbalist Samuel Thomson. Peach kernel, leaf, and twig contain fruit acids and cyanogens which are strongly cooling. Cyanide turns down the Kreb’s cycle in the mitochondria to prevent energy production – which is why it is toxic in large doses. –Mathew Wood

“Peach is a superlative remedy when heat or excitation is combined with dryness. The cooling, moistening properties of the fruit are also found in the leaves and twigs. The tongue is often elongated, flame-shaped, carmine red, and dry, usually free of secretion or slightly coated, corresponding to a hot, dry state. (When the tongue is flame-shaped, carmine, and wet think of rose or linden. When it is red and harshly dry, with cracks on the burnished surface, think of marshmallow for dryness causing heat).” – Mathew Wood

It’s considered to be anthelmintic, astringent, antifungal. Depending on the part of the plant you’re using, Peach tastes sweet, sour and slightly bitter in varying proportions. It is cool energetically and somewhat moistening. Most parts of the plant are good for medicine and more or less interchangeable. You can use the leaves, twigs and flowers, all of which are delightful.

Tommy Bass: “ You know peach tree leaves is a wonderful medicine. And it'll make a good tea for the nerves, and also good for the kidney and the liver. And take expectant mothers, where they got morning sickness, and just take a handful like that and put it in a teacup, run hot water over it and let it sit about ten minutes and drink a cup at night, one in the morning. It just kills that morning sickness graveyard dead.”

Physio-Medical Therapeutics, Materia Medica and Pharmacy BY T. J. LYLE, A.M.M. 1897

This is an excellent fruit of fine flavour and taste, and is quite nourishing in its ripe state and is somewhat laxative to the bowels. But the canned peach is a dangerous article of diet to the sick. The dried peach is far better. Soak it for twelve hours and then cook. This is best when the peach is out of season.

The kernels are a, mildly stimulating tonic to the stomach; and if a diffusive be added the influence will be felt more generally throughout the alvine canal.If these be given in infusion care must be taken that fresh infusion be made every ten or twelve hours, and taken cold. This must be done in order to prevent the formation of hydrochloric acid. This same precaution should be observed in the use of the leaves, which are moderately stimulating, and demulcent to the mucous membrane throughout the alvine canal, the kidneys, ureters, bladder and urethra, and may be used to good advantage in the treatment of catarrh of the alvine and urinary tracts, for the relief of irritated conditions, and for the cleansing of accumulated mucous.

A hot infusion will influence the circulation toward the surface and produce diaphoresis. For some cases cold preparations are best. A diffusive renders this agent more active;

The bark of the tree is also useful and is a stronger tonic than the leaves. It is excellent in catarrhal indigestion. The fresh bark and leaves are much to be preferred, but if carefully dried they will still be of some importance. The green leaves are excellent applied as a hot fomentation in cholera infantum, inflammation of stomach, bowels or bladder.

Uses

Environmental Toxins

The Peach leaf extracts are rich in purified a-glucans, which may protect against environmental toxins.

Skin:

Because of the sensitivity of tissues in a dry, hot state, peach is well suited to allergies and auto-immune disease, either directly as a curative or as an assistant. It is well indicated (like its cousins rose and almond) for people with sensitive skin and tissues. It often will control hives and rashes, showing here its affinity to allergic excess. Hildegard von Bingen (1992, 109) recommends it for “one who, in various illnesses, has any kind of spots on his body.” Mathew Wood has often seen it soften skin that is dry, scaly, red, and irritated.

Use when the skin is clammy, retaining water, during hot weather.

For Hives and Rashes

Skin, Aging

The extract exhibits action on cell growth and may help to slow the sign, of aging, with a noted decrease in crow's-feet wrinkles and reduction in roughness of the skin.

Sores & Wounds

Peach leaves were used by traditional herbalists for the healing sores and wounds.

Externally for burns

Boils & Detox

Poultice

Peach is slightly mucilaginous and drawing, so it has been used as a poultice to bring boils to a head and draw them out. Eva Graf, who used it in this fashion, also thought that it drew out toxins and old deposits of drugs or antibiotics, “from the bones.”

Bug Bites

Peach leaf spit poultice for various red burning/itching bug bites. Quick-acting and remarkably effective in most cases, it’s an all-around great treatment and can be combined with Plantain for even broader application. Peach can help calm hyperimmune responses, including allergic reactions and some autoimmune conditions associated with heat. Specifically use it with venomous insects that result in a very red or hot site. It’s quite effective on any external inflammation (much like Rose) and in this way is very versatile.

Hair

Modern-day hair care product formulas seem to have revisited the annals of natural herbal hair care. Traditional American Folklore has shown the use of Peach leaf tea, or tincture, for hair conditioning and as a hair growth aid. It is believed to create more volume, for dry lifeless hair, and more body and shine. Peach acts on the scalp as well. “A gentleman of about fifty showed me his head, on which an abundant growth of hair was appearing, on a part which he said had been bald for years, from the use, for a short time, of a tincture of peach pits in brandy” (Cobb, 1846, 1:144).

Loss of color in hair, loss of hair (with sage).

For bad breath

For headache pain,

For high blood pressure.

Sedative

This herb is strengthening to the nervous system, is a mild sedative, and has been used for sleeplessness. As a relaxant nervine, it has the capacity to be very helpful in cases of insomnia and anxiety typified by tension, dryness and some level of burnout. For some people, it can act as nearly an outright sedative, but for others it’s just gently calming. It seems to really depend on what the person needs. It was one of Tommie Bass’s favorite nervines.

Anxiety/hysteria/Stress/Tension/Grief

Heart palpitations from anxiety. It’ll usually be most effective in people with red tongues or red-tipped (and often totally uncoated) tongues, with symptoms of over-heatedness, irritation and obsessiveness.

Stress/Tension

Great for when tension is manifesting as feeling overheated, with parch mouthed and overtly irritated. It makes a soothing; cooling nervine is such cases and won’t aggravate dryness. There’s something deeply restorative about Peach.

Helps to heal hurt caused by grief or loss, or anger that stems from a deep wound. It works very well with its cousin Rose for these uses, especially if there’s any depression or sexual component involved. Where Hawthorn seems to work better for the raging grief caused by rejection or acute loss, Peach is often most specific where there’s some level of obsession or chronic focus on something lost or long awaited , and that obsession manifests as ongoing irritation, tension leading to burnout and consuming sadness. That’s not say that Peach doesn’t make a fabulous general nervine, it certainly does. Peach leaf tea is a traditional Southern/Appalachian remedy for hysteria, anxiousness and nervousness. It’s quite safe and is particularly helpful for children, pregnant women and those of sensitive or delicate constitutions.

Female

– Leucorrhea.

– Vomiting of pregnancy and reflex irritation.

– Menopause.

PMS

Moody, overwhelming PMS with quite good results, combined with Cherry if having anxiety attacks along with the PMS.

Menopause

It is cooling in menopause. See the formula in Prep/Dose section

Pain

– Pain (“beat up a handful of the fresh leaves, put them in a bag, and steam for fifteen minutes and apply”) (Ralph Russell, 1911, 327).

Hot fevers, lack of sweat

Peach has been used for hot fevers with lack of sweat,

Respiration

Useful for chronic chest complaints.

– Upper respiratory allergies and irritation; eyes, nose, throat.

– Cough with irritation and dryness of the throat and bronchial tubes; whooping cough,

chronic bronchitis

It is also used in whooping cough, as it helps with chest congestion

Abscess in the lungs,

Tuberculosis

Throat Irritation

Peach Leaf has also been used to treat irritation of the throat and for soothing bronchial mucous membranes

Stomach irritation, nausea, morning sickness

It’s a supreme digestive tonic for those with signs of dryness and heat. Where there’s diarrhea, churning stomach and short transit time, Peach is wonderful. It can help increase appetite while soothing irritation (Cook), much like its close relative Cherry.

Peach Leaf has been found almost a specific for irritation and congestion of the gastric surfaces. Peach Leaves and the bark of the peach tree have been used to treat gastric and stomach irritations and abdominal tenderness, irritation, or congestion. For irritation and great sensitivity of the stomach, so that even a glass of water causes pain – hence in morning sickness. It soothes nausea (especially if accompanied by a red tipped tongue or symptoms of heat) better than most herbs, including Ginger.

William Salmon (1692, 42, 52) spent his youth in South Carolina (which he calls the “West Indies”), where he picked up the use of peach leaves for colic or bellyache. “This is a specifick in a cholic beyond most other things and withal very safe,” he writes. “In the West-India’s (where Peach-Trees are plentiful) the disease is cured by taking three or four times syrup of peaches; or by taking a very strong decoction made of the bruised leaves of the peach-tree.” He made an “essence of peach leaf” which “purges well, and carries off the morbifick cause to a miracle; but it ought to be taken three, four, or five times, as the exigency of the disease requires.”

It’s safe during pregnancy, and can not just calm morning sickness but also seems to moderate some hormonal symptoms like anxiety and restless moodiness, as well as adding tone to the reproductive organs, especially the uterus.

Use for irritation of the stomach and upper gastrointestinal tract. Acute tenderness over the stomach; vomiting of nervous origin; especially during pregnancy; whenever one cannot bear even the sight or smell of food. For nervous, restless babies who vomit up everything including water.

Cholera infantum, cholera morbus; colic. Gastritis, dyspepsia, gastralgia. Worms when there are symptoms of heat and irritation.

Chronic Diarrhea and dysentery

Extract is used

Liver:

Chronic hepatitis

Kidney / Bladder

– Edema, probably caused by heat, irritation, and dryness of the kidneys.

– Irritable bladder with extreme tenderness over the part; retention of urine, blood in the

urine, irritation.

Children’s remedy

Flowers

Because it is suited to delicate and sensitive skin, nerves, and constitution, peach is an excellent remedy for children. Sir John Hill (1740, 292) writes, “the flowers are to be used. A pint of water is to be poured, boiling hot, on a pound weight of peach-blossoms; when it has stood four and twenty hours, it is to be poured off through a sieve, without squeezing, and two pound of loaf-sugar is to be dissolved in it over the fire; this makes an excellent syrup for children. It purges gently, and sometimes will make them puke a little. They have so frequent occasion for this, that people who have children have continual use for it.” Hill does not give the uses for children clearly: peach is cooling and calming, good for excess stimulation, restlessness, insomnia, allergies, skin rashes, vomiting, constipation, worms, etc.

“In diseases of children we frequently find the stomach irritable, the nausea and vomiting being sometimes so persistent that the necessary medicines cannot be taken. In such cases an infusion of the bark of the young limbs of the peach tree, given frequently in small doses, will almost invariably arrest it” (Scudder, Eclectic Medical Journal, 1864, 38; reprinted by Brinker, 1996).