Borage Plants

It has served many purposes from the time of ancient Rome to the present. Pliny the Elder believed it to be an anti-depressant, and it has long been thought to give courage and comfort to the heart.

Borage has traditionally been used to dilate blood vessels, act as a sedative, balance digestion, cleanse poisons from the blood and treat seizures.

Pulp the leaves and squeeze the juice onto ringworm patches and inflamed swollen spots. And you can also use the same juice for the stings of poisonous insects.

Apply an infusion of borage flowers as a treatment for eye inflammation.

One old wives’ tale states that if a woman slipped a bit of borage into a promising man’s drink, it would give him the courage to propose.

At one time it was grown by beekeepers to boost honey production. You could say that borage is a super plant!

With a taste comparable to that of cucumber, borage has various culinary applications. Both the leaves and flowers of the plant are edible and medicinal. You can eat a handful of the young, slightly steamed leaves and flowers, or have them raw in salads.

The flowers can be used as edible decorations, but to stop there would be an insult to the wide variety of uses for borage.

This herb can be used in soups, salads, borage-lemonade, strawberry-borage cocktails, preserves, borage jelly, various sauces, cooked as a stand-alone vegetable, or used in desserts in the form of fresh or candied flowers, to name a few.