365 Urban Species. #167: Yarrow

Location: Ringer park at Gordon Street, Allston.

Urban species #167: Yarrow Achillea millefolium

This little weed has been valued for medicinal or magical properties for at least, apparently, 50,000 years. Its long list of uses includes: curing everything from baldness to hemorrhoids, stopping bleeding, preventing the pain from firewalking, and determining if your love is true. Whatever its effectiveness in any of these may be, what can't be denied is that the plant contains a whole battery of interesting chemicals. Of these, phenols and tannins are known to have medicinal properties, and then there is the fact that yarrow contains salicylic acid, which is used to make aspirin. A complete list of yarrow's purported effects on the body and spirit would take pages, and those pages are available to those who are interested.

Yarrow's own properties include a resistance to drought which allows it to grow in dusty roadside soil. A perennial, it spreads by rhizome (underground stems) through lawns and garden edges. Many species, subspecies, and varieties exist, with wild yarrows found throughout the northern hemisphere, and pink cultivated yarrows grown as ornamentals and garden flowers. It's finely dissected leaves and crowns of clustered blossoms invite comparisons to Queen Anne's Lace, but yarrow is in the aster family.