Inula graveolens/Elecampane

pH 4.7–4.9

Aroma and Taste Minty, cool, slightly spicy fragrance with a hint of cherry floral on the edge. Taste is minty and decidedly medicinal, like a cough syrup.

Stability and Shelf Life Unstable. Inula has a maximum shelf life of one year but frequently lasts for only six to eight months. Very careful monitoring is necessary to protect against degradation and bloom, but it’s worth it. Inula water is very hard to source because it is harvested from the wild and has exhibited quite dramatic differences in odor, taste, and stability from year to year. For this reason it is very hard to acquire reliably.

Properties and Applications The number-one choice for any condition affecting the respiratory system. Elecampane stops coughing “fast,” even the spasmodic whooping cough; take fifteen milliliters undiluted every two hours or whenever a coughing fit seems to be coming on. Its mucolytic effects make it useful for chest congestion and phlegm, particularly bronchitis, for which it is also the best choice. You can try it for everything from laryngitis to sinusitis; it is altogether a remarkable respiratory-system tonic. Make a cough syrup with this hydrosol and keep it on hand throughout the winter: Add one tablespoon of honey and ten drops of essential oil to one hundred milliliters of hydrosol; shake really well before use. Take one teaspoon at a time as necessary. A three-week treatment can help rebalance the terrain of the lungs and can be of great help to anyone suffering from chronic respiratory complaints.

Elecampane also makes a valuable cardiovascular tonic, calming, regulating, strengthening, and helping to reduce hypertension. Perhaps it just “lightens the load,” as all things as rare and ethereal as Inula seem able to do. Its exceptional mucolytic properties make it appropriate in a douche for thrush, vaginitis, or leukorrea; this can easily be combined with other treatments, such as a tampon rolled in live yogurt and one to three drops of tea tree oil. It is experimental for leukemia and problems in the bone marrow. In Chinese medicine it is used for breast cancer and conditions of the lungs and liver. Applied one drop at a time to acupuncture points, it has astounding and instantaneous effects.

In skin care, use elecampane in combination with green myrtle to clear up infected wounds, or apply it on its own as a toner for very oily or congested skin and acne. A facial steam with this hydrolate and two teaspoons of the Swiss Kriss brand herb mixture will clean pores deeper than anything else I know and is perfect for all skin types, even delicate and sensitive. I use this combination whenever I do a liver detox with Greenland moss, as the detox always causes pimples along the liver meridians in my face within twenty-four hours of starting the cleanse, and the facial steams draw out even more toxins.

Jasminum sambac/Jasmine

pH 5.6

Aroma and Taste All my initial samples of the “real” thing were produced in India during hydro-distillation of jasmine attar, and so it retained an element of the sandalwood oil that forms the attar base. It was distinctly jasmine flowers but not like the potent and concentrated absolute. This is jasmine after a cool rain, when the blossom is still wet and its fragrance slightly retiring. The taste is most interesting, partly owing to the distillation process, so there is the edge of dry warm sandalwood as an aftertaste of the floral component. However, a recent sample from Hawaii was Jasmine sambac hydro-distilled only for the hydrosol. The few drops of oil it contained were heavier than the water, sinking to the bottom of the bottle, and the smell and taste were totally exquisite, very close to the absolute and better by miles than anything I’ve seen before. (Refer to the section Fakes and Adulteration in chapter 1 for more on jasmine hydrosol.)

Stability and Shelf Life Unknown.

Properties and Applications Unknown. The fakes, mostly from India and Egypt, are quite artificial, and I have had only one delivery of the real, real thing, so I have no idea what it will do, other than smell glorious. But isn’t that enough with jasmine?