Prunella vulgaris, Bombus

Sarah Red-Laird, 1978

Trisaetum Bee Habitat in Cyanotype Five

Coast Range Vineyard

Prunella vulgaris, Bombus

Cyanotype, goldleaf paint, Trisaetum/BGO Entomological Collection

Summer, 2022

One of our favorite surprises of our Bee Friendly Vineyards collaboration is Prunella vulgaris, aka self-heal.

For the last decade, or so, the hillsides around the Coast Range vineyard, near McMinnville, were mowed to nubbins.  In 2021 year, the crew transitioned from mowing to watering our bee habitat plots, an essential task during the drought.

Where there once was stubble, is now a wildflower meadow of daisies, clover, flatweed, glandweed, poison oak (a popular native flower!!), and self-heal abuzz with bees and other beneficials like ladybugs and butterflies.

Self-heal is a nectar source for bees as small as little sweat bees, aka Lasioglossum, and as big as queen Bombus, aka bumble bees.  It's also a larval host for the Clouded sulphur butterfly.

It's a perennial herb native in Europe, Asia, Africa, and North America.

The Nlaka'pamux (Thompson River Salish people) use the whole plant to make a healing tea.

From the CommonWealth Center for Holistic Herbalism 🌱

"Self Heal, Prunella vulgaris, is one of those plants that seems able to do everything. Writing in the 16th century, Gerard said that no herb equals Self Heal for healing wounds, and a whole host of other things. Self Heal is used all over the world – by Native Americans, Europeans, and all across Asia, for things as varied as thyroid problems to conjunctivitis to tuberculosis to arthritis to cancer. Which sounds absurd, or at least exaggerated, right? Except, Self Heal is one of the more widely studied herbs and even in scientific studies, you see these broad lists of conditions where Self Heal has been helpful – as an anti-inflammatory painkiller, for gingivitis, for osteoarthritis, HIV, herpes, diabetes, high blood pressure, even tuberculosis, liver cancer, and endometriosis! And to top it all off, amnesia and dementia?? What is going on? When even scientific studies come back with such a wide range of seemingly unrelated issues, clearly there’s something amazing about this plant!"

Now that you know that there is so much more to this plant than beauty and bee food, consider harvesting some next year and enjoy it in a spring salad!