Goldenrod
Lighting The Way As Summer Wanes
“I paint flowers so they will not die.” ~ Frida Kahlo
Goldenrod’s small yellow sunflowers bloom late summer and into autumn as the days become shorter and nights become longer. They contain the energy of the waning summer sun, offering warmth and light to illuminate dark, damp spaces within our bodies. This plant, whose botanical name is Solidago, comes from the Latin words solidus, meaning “whole,” and ago, meaning “to make.”
Goldenrod is a medicine of transition, balance, wholeness, and integration.
Goldenrod is considered a weed by many in North America and is often blamed for late-summer allergies because they appear with their striking recognizable blossom at the time people begin to sneeze. But goldenrod pollen is too heavy and sticky to be blown far from the flowers that are pollinated by bees, flies, wasps, and butterflies. The inconspicuous culprit for our seasonal allergies is ragweed, with their green camouflaged flowers that bloom at the same time and are pollinated by wind.
Goldenrod tincture and tea are a remedy for the very allergies they often take the blame for, and with powerful diuretic properties, can flush waste from the body by releasing excess water and increasing urine flow. Many of my herbalism students have experienced the plant’s uplifing qualities, sharing that the tincture or tea when used regularly, has helped them through times of darkness. The showy flowers can also be made into a wonderful yellowish-gold dye.
This beautiful North American native has naturalized throughout Europe, Asia, and parts of Africa. Perennial wildflowers, they are living torches that grow from rhizomes and rise together in fields, forest edges, and beach dunes, helping us find our way back to clearings as daylight fades. They provide food for the transformation of butterflies, supporting the most species of butterflies and moths year round, and are my favorite flower for life’s inevitable changes.
Mary Oliver writes of goldenrod, “they rise in a stiff sweetness, in the pure peace of giving one's gold away.”