Botanical atlas

Twinleaf

Jeffersonia diphylla

Twinleaf earned its old country name, rheumatism root, from the way nineteenth-century American physicians and home healers turned to its dried rhizome for aching, swollen joints. It was official in the United States Pharmacopoeia for several decades in the 1800s, prescribed as a diuretic and expectorant and applied as a poultice to sores and ulcers. Cherokee and other Native healers likewise used the root in washes and preparations for inflammation and skin complaints long before Eclectic physicians adopted it into their own dispensatories. By the twentieth century its use faded, edged out by more predictable remedies, and today it survives mostly as a woodland wildflower prized for its beauty rather than its medicine chest.

In tradition.

Twinleaf earned its old country name, rheumatism root, from the way nineteenth-century American physicians and home healers turned to its dried rhizome for aching, swollen joints. It was official in the United States Pharmacopoeia for several decades in the 1800s, prescribed as a diuretic and expectorant and applied as a poultice to sores and ulcers. Cherokee and other Native healers likewise used the root in washes and preparations for inflammation and skin complaints long before Eclectic physicians adopted it into their own dispensatories. By the twentieth century its use faded, edged out by more predictable remedies, and today it survives mostly as a woodland wildflower prized for its beauty rather than its medicine chest.

Safety.

Twinleaf root has fallen out of use because larger doses act as a purgative and emetic, causing vomiting and digestive upset, and no safe internal dose is established. It's also a slow-growing, increasingly uncommon woodland plant, so it should never be foraged; enjoy it only as a garden plant from nursery stock.