YERBA SANTA

Eriodictyon crassifolium

ABOUT

Yerba santa (or the “holy herb”) is a thick, wooly leafed plant that is native to both California and Baja California.The leaves are very distinct and once you recognize them, you’ll find that this plant is all over the Santa Clarita Valley.

You can actually chew the leaves right off the plant, and you’ll notice an interesting taste characteristic - it will start out bitter, but will slowly become sweeter.

One of my favorite things to do, is to actually make a tea out of the leaves. The tea increases the sweetness of the leaves quite a bit (the sweetness reminds me of stevia) meaning you likely won’t have to add any additional sweetener. The pleasant taste of the plant has actually made it useful as a food flavoring or as an additive to herbal syrups (to disguise the taste of the other ingredients).

For the Chumash Indians, yerba santa was their go-to plant to cure any breathing related problem. Its leaves were used in a form of tea which was used to treat respiratory sicknesses including colds, asthma, tuberculosis and chronic bronchitis. It can also be used as a poultice to help with breathing/relaxation. Click here for more information on the Chumash people and their relationship with yerba santa.

Yerba santa was even an approved medicine for the management of airway infections in the U.S. until the year 1960 when strict laws were passed about all medicines needing to prove their efficacy (no one was willing to conduct clinical trials for yerba santa).

The plant also has medicinal use beyond just the respiratory aspects - a hot, potent extract can be applied to a poison oak rash to quicken healing and there is also a study from the Salk Institute which shows an extract of the plant may help those with Alzheimers. The plant also contains several active flavonoids including eriodictyol, which has antibiotic, anti-inflammatory, and expectorant properties.

More info on yerba santa can be found on the US Forest website as well as WebMD and Wikipedia.