Trees as Sources of Medicine
3 May, 2019, 9 comments
Dr Henry Oakeley, Garden Fellow at the Medicinal Garden of the Royal College of Physicians, London, introduces trees from around the world that have medicinal uses or connections. The ancient plane tree, Platanus orientalis subspecies insularis from the Island of Cos, off the coast of Greece, under which Hippocrates taught his medical students 2,300 years ago and parent of the London plane. Drimys winteri, a forest tree from Tierra del Fuego, whose fruits cured sailors of scurvy 450 years ago; along with Citrus trees whose fruits have been used for this since 1617. He talks about the olive tree, Olea europaea, source of olive oil, and the American sassafras tree, Sasafras albidum, once used to flavour children’s drinks but now the main source of the drug Ecstasy. To finish there is the pomegranate, Punica granatum and its elegant dwarf variety nana, whose juice was used in mediaeval times to treat fevers; and the fabulously ancient maidenhair tree Gingko biloba, whose extracts increase cerebral blood flow in ancient arteries to little effect, but may have more light-hearted properties. https://garden.rcplondon.ac.uk/ An Adliberate film http://www.adliberate.co.uk for WoodlandsTV http://www.woodlands.co.uk/tv