Houseleek

(Sempervivum tectorum)

Also called: Stonecrop, Sengreen, Jupiter's Eye, Thors Beard.

Description: This little herb grows plentifully on walls and tops of small buildings. The leaves form rosettes 2 to 3 inches in diameter; they are fleshy and flat with no stalk; oblong, incurved and pointed, hairy on the margins. It bears small purple flowers on long stems.

Medicinal uses: The juice is very helpful in curing corns and warts, if applied daily.

In rural districts the bruised leaves of the fresh plant were often applied to burns, scalds, sore legs and chronic skin diseases.

Galen extolled the uses of houseleek in the treatment of erysipelas and shingles.

Gerard said: 'The juice being gently rubbed on any place stung by nettles or bees, or bitten by any venemous creature cloth presently take away the pain'.

Parkinson said: 'The juice takes away corns from the toes and feet if they be bathed therewith every day, and at night emplastered as it were, with the skin of the same houseleek'.

Part used: Fresh leaves. Houseleek is derived from the anglo-saxon word leek, a plant growing on a house.

Directions for use: The fresh leaves are bruised and applied as a poultice to inflammatory conditions of the skin.

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This little plant has great tenacity and vitality and it is recorded that a botanist tried hard for eighteen months to dry a plant of houseleek for his herbarium but failed. He restored it to its first site where it grew again as though nothing had interfered with its ordinary life.

In olden times it was often planted on roofs of houses because it is supposed to be a guard against thunder and lightning.

The Greeks were very fond of houseleeks and grew them in vases in the windows of their houses.