Materia Medica: The Power of Plants as Medicine
Instructor: Feather Jones

USNEA

Usnea Species Family: Lichen
Usnea Dasypogam, Usnea barbata, Usnea ceratina

Common Name: Old Man’s Beard

Description: Long wispy strands of gray-green hair; common tufts growing in trees and trunks, branches and stumps, main stem had slender white cord inside that is elastic when wet, stiff when dry; consists of one-celled green algae and fungus that forms symbiotic relationship; usually found in old growth forest resembling from a distance Spanish moss.

History: Recorded from 1700 BCE to 50 years ago – used for tuberculosis. Used as a dye in traditional Scottish tweeds; fixatives and bases for soaps and perfumes, litmus paper (acid-base determination), used in Egypt 1700 BCE for medicinal purposes and embalming, also made a purple dye highly esteemed by the ancients; Doctrine of Signatures indicates the leafy variety with raised vein-like markings resembling lung tissue for lung infections-called lungwort. Old Man’s Beard variety was a specific for hair and scalp.

Constituents: Usnic acid (antibiotic activity; chelates minerals and makes them available as nutrients), lactone acids, pulvic acid, anthraquinones (stimulate bowels endocrocin), polysaccharide (immune stimulating), fatty acids, essential amino acids, carotene, coumarin derivatives, depsides and depsidones.

Properties: Antibiotic; anti-bacterial; anti-fungal; hemostatic; mucilage (soothing to mucus membranes), expectorant, immune potentiator

Medicinal Action: Antibiotic activity in some cases more powerful than penicillin; tincture had been used successfully against tuberculosis lymphadenitis; tested active against gram positive bacteria – strep, staph; pneumococcus, Trichomonas, Candida, Mycobacterium tuberculosis; minimal action on E. coli, good against some fungal strains and lupus, auto-immune disorders; works on urinary, respiratory and gastrointestinal tract (papaverine-like activity relaxes colon); increases resistance to influenza and colds; poorly water soluble; makes a good gargle, colonic or enema. Plant is always alive; in World War I, it was used to stuff gurgling chest wounds; water extracts of one compound (polysaccharides) causes 99% inhibition of cancer; non-toxic. The penicillin molecule closely resembles one that gram positive bacteria uses as structural component in cell walls; to salmonella, Usnea will stop the over growth but not kill it; usnic acid is not absorbed in the gut so antibacterial action takes effect in the intestinal lumen and there is no risk of allergic reaction.