Calendula

The healing power of herbs is most easily observed in their power to help injuries heal more quickly. I’ve been amazed at how rapidly some plants can work to speed the healing of damaged tissues, and one of those remedies is calendula (Calendula officinalis).

Calendula is well known for its ability to help cuts, lacerations, bruises, and other injuries to heal. Used topically, it helps to stop bleeding, reduce inflammation, prevent bruising, and speed healing. It can be applied topically as a poultice, used as an ingredient in salves, or you can apply the tea or tincture as a compress.

It’s also widely used in homeopathy for healing injuries. It can be taken internally with tablets or applied topically using lotions. I frequently use a homeopathic cream made from arnica and calendula to treat all types of injuries except for bleeding cuts (don't use arnica on bleeding wounds) and find it will rapidly reduce redness and swelling, ease pain, prevent bruising, and shorten the time it takes for the injury to heal.

Other Topical Uses

Calendula is not limited to healing injuries. It can be used on any red, irritated skin condition, including rashes, diaper rash, athlete’s foot and other fungal infections, cracked or sore nipples from breastfeeding, insect bites and stings, and bruises. The tea can be used to make a compress to heal conjunctivitis.

I find salves made with comfrey and calendula very useful for all kinds of topical irritations and injuries. I’ve made my own using comfrey, calendula, and plantain. The recipe for a Basic Healing Salve is in Modern Herbal Dispensatory, but you can find many commercial versions, too. I’ve successfully used calendula and comfrey salves on diaper rash, red and irritated skin conditions, chapped lips, wounds, and all types of minor injuries.

Internal Uses for Calendula 

Calendula can also be used internally as a tea or tincture. Taken as a hot tea, it has a diuretic action and can help to reduce fevers (similar to yarrow). It can also heal ulcerations and inflammatory conditions in the bowels. It improves lymphatic drainage and can be combined with other lymphatic herbs like mullein, red clover, cleavers, and Oregon grape to help shrink swollen lymph nodes ease stagnation and congestion in tissues. This can also help clear out a congested liver to ease jaundice or elevated liver enzymes. 

Calendula can help ease menstrual pain and heavy menstrual bleeding. It can be used as a douche for yeast infections. It can also be used as a mouthwash to help heal bleeding gums or heal the gums after tooth extractions.

Calendula Flower Essence

At first, the indications for using calendula as a flower essence seem a little backward. Calendula's best-known property is the ability to heal cuts. So you might guess that as a flower essence, it would be for someone who is being emotionally cut, but it is actually a better remedy for the person who is doing the emotional cutting.

You might know someone who cuts others with their words. They use cutting remarks and words to cut someone down to size. The idea that “sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will never hurt me,” isn’t true. In all the emotional healing work I’ve done I’ve seen how much damage people do to each other with unkind and even cruel words. On some emotional or spiritual level, the hurtful things we say do wound people.

Calendula helps those people who cut others with their words feel the impact their words are having on others. This helps them to soften their communication and speak to others in a more respectful manner.

Healing the Wounds Behind the Cutting Personality 

I think that calendula helps people with cutting personalities because people who attack others with unkind language are wounded themselves. Behind anger is hurt and the person who needs calendula has been emotionally scarred by unkind words directed at them. The emotional hardness they build around themselves makes it difficult for them to empathize with others. They don’t understand why the people they are cutting down can’t just toughen up and take it the way they have learned to do.

I’ve had great success in helping verbally angry people using the combination of calendula and snapdragon. Snapdragon is for people who tend to snap at others with a dragon-like temper.  It’s a great remedy for people who are verbally aggressive and quick to argue.

By helping an angry person connect with their own wounds, these flower essences help people recognize the wounds their words inflict on others. They learn to listen more and communicate in a more loving and respectful way.

Using Calendula

If you want to grow and harvest calendula, be aware that while calendula is sometimes called marigold, don’t confuse it with the garden marigolds from the Tagetes genus. They’re completely different plants.

Calendula is an annual that’s easy to grow in a garden. To harvest calendula, collect the flower heads when they are in full bloom and dry them. You can make a tea using one teaspoon of the crushed flowers per cup of hot water. Drink the tea for internal ailments or use it as a soak, compress, or fomentation topically.  You can also take calendula as a tincture (20-60 drops three times a day) or in capsules (2 three times a day).

You can also use it topically in a salve or lotion, or mix the flowers into a poultice base for topical application to wounds or irritated tissues. Calendula is also available as homeopathic tablets or creams which you can use as directed.