Jewelweed Recipe for Poison/Potent Ivy Rash Prevention

Jewelweed Recipe for Poison/Potent Ivy Rash Prevention 🌿

I call poison ivy (Rhus toxicodendron) “potent" ivy as a more respectful term for this fierce plant teacher. I respect potent ivy's medicine of guiding each of us to take responsibility for where our bodies are in space, and in relation to other life forms. In other words, potent ivy wants you to know where you are at any given moment, not to just blunder through physical space, and life. This is important, consciousness awakening medicine! Furthermore, potent ivy is a shape-shifter, adapting to different situations and excelling at camouflage, another worthy life-skill. This plant absorbs carbon from the atmosphere and so, has gotten stronger as we have polluted the air more densely. PI is a protective plant for the Earth. A Guardian. Right now she’s working overtime. Let’s help her to be able to relax a bit. May Potent Ivy inspire us to be more effective Guardians of our Mother Earth.

Jewelweed (that’s Impatiens capensis where I live, AKA Spotted touch-me-not) contains a compound called lawsone in its leaves proven to have anti-histamine and anti-inflammatory properties, and you can “prove” the anti-inflammatory properties yourself, by rubbing it on your skin.

I put a generous amount of jewelweed, with or without the roots, depending on if I'm thinning the jewelweed out, or not… I use them with or without flowers (I tend to eat those instead, they are so sweet) and I cut or rip up the plants, enough to fill my large soup pot and cover with cold water and bring to a quick boil, then lower the heat and cook them like soup, for a few hours, covered… you can remove the herbs, squeeze them to get everything from them, then put the strained “soup” into ice cube trays to freeze them.

However, what I usually do is remove the jewelweed, squeeze the herbs to get all the liquid into the soup pot, and then put fresh jewelweed into the water and cook it all over again, once or even twice more, to make the cubes as potent as possible.

After the jewelweed ice cubes are frozen I pop em out of the ice cube trays and store in zip locks bags, (personally, I line the zip lock bag with unbleached parchment paper, as I limit my exposure to plastics whenever possible.

These cubes work great! They can be rubbed on the skin preventatively, in the same way that fresh jewelweed can, but I really rely on them for post-exposure application. Rinse exposed areas as soon as possible with fresh cold water if you have nothing else, but if you have the option, rinse with cold water, then use your jewelweed ice cubes liberally, to prevent rash breakout from the urushiol oil that the potent ivy exudes.