Additional notes (click to expand)

Medicinal

The species of this plant is used in traditional medicine. Culpeper: “... taken inwardly resist pestilence and poison, helps ruptures, and bruises, stays fluxes, vomiting and immoderate flowing of the terms in women, helps inflammations and soreness of the mouth, and fastens loose teeth, being bruised and boiled in white wine and the mouth washed with it.”
Culpeper, Nicholas. (1650). A Physical Directory . London, Peter Cole.

The species of this plant is still used in modern herbal medicine for a similar wide variety of internal conditions, but it can also be cooked and eaten as a vegetable. The use to relieve toothache, applied as a paste to the affected tooth, seems to have been widespread.
Oakeley, Dr. H. F. . (2013). The Gardens of the Pharmacopoeia Londinensis. link

Nomenclature

Previously grown as Persicaria bistorta 'Superba'
Plants of the World online, Kew Science http://www.plantsoftheworldonline.org/taxon/urn:lsid:ipni.org:names:60430545-2 link

Bistorta officinalis 'Superba'

Family: POLYGONACEAE
Genus: Bistorta
Species: officinalis
Cultivar: 'Superba'
Common names: Red Bistort 'Superba'
Distribution summary: Europe, N.& W.Asia
Habit: Perennial
Hardiness: H7 - Very hardy
Garden status: Currently grown
Garden location: Plants of the World (C)
Flowering months: June, July, August


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