Flowers as Medicine: Daisies

Daisies are some of the most common flowers, found everywhere from professional bouquets of flowers to roadsides and gardens. They're pretty, fragrant wild flowers with lots of delicate petals and they're prized for a variety of reasons by people all over.

These flowers are only mildly edible, meaning they can be eaten rather safely, but its side effects have not been officially documented widely enough to be considered completely safe. However, the use of this plan as a medicine has been documented throughout history, and in those documented cases, the daisy was more often than not ingested by eating without adverse side effects. Even today, people use daisies for many of the same purposes they were used for centuries ago, still praising its many positive effects and either overlooking or completely ignoring any adverse effects it may have had, on account of it being used in several salad, soup, and entrée recipes throughout the world.

The daisy petals are said to have a pleasant taste, sometimes a bit sour depending on what stage of growth the flower is in when it's harvested and eaten. When eaten, daisies are said to have wonderful effects on your digestive system, aiding in the digestion of whatever food you're eating with it, and letting it settle in your stomach without coming back as heartburn, diarrhea or any other stomach or digestive problem associated with your diet. Daisies are also a powerful antispasmodic when ingested along with food, being known to calm your nerves and muscles, making them a recommended part of a healthy diet if you have any nervous or spastic problems!

The petals of the daisy flower have long been used as a wound dressing, being especially popular during our world's wars to aid in the healing and pain relief of soldiers on the field when newer technologies in first aid were either not invented or not available. This is not a useless strategy, as daisies are known to be anodynes, or pain relieving herbs, that have even been used through recorded history as one of the most well known and commonly used pain remedies in the world!

As with most flowers and herbs, daisies have also been used to prevent and fight against certain types of cancer, most notably breast cancer. The studies conducted have different outcomes, but most results end with promising results for the common garden flower. Daisies are also used to combat more typical and less harmful problems, such as dry skin and sore throats. Their petals as well as the natural chemical occurrences inside the plant itself have been known to have moisturizing properties, and are useful in healing dry skin patches or even eczema. The petals, leaves, even stems, are known by the scientific community to be antitussive, meaning they prevent and cure scratchy, itchy, or sore throats. In fact, many common remedies for strep throat and allergic reactions causing throat trauma or soreness, extracts from the daisy flower are prominent and often it's main ingredient!

Flowers in medicine are, and have always been, a vital part of staying healthy as a human. When a flower as common and underestimated as the daisy has such amazing properties that are severely overlooked by the populous, perhaps it's time to re-examine how the world looks at natural medicines.

Sources:

(Plants for a Future)
(UT Botanicals on Daisies)