PLANT LORE STUDY GROUP: JUNE 2025: COOLING BOTANICALS: BEATING THE SUMMER HEAT: PART II

Cooling herbs work in several ways:

• Refrigerant: hibiscus and lemon balm help lower the body's temperature by way of cooling the tissues and can also have a sedative effect.

• Sour Taste: light astringents such as blackberry or raspberry leaf, and rose petals support the body’s internal thermostat through helping with circulation, and have drying properties that help offset heat and humidity. Herbs and plants that have a sour taste such as blueberries, hibiscus, lemons, lemon balm, lemongrass, limes, rosehips, sorrel, which is very refreshing if lightly sweetened, and lemon verbena have a cooling effect on the body.

• Sweet Taste: fennel, anise hyssop, licorice root, apples, crabapples, and peaches are cooling, especially when sweetened further with honey or maple syrup.

Cooling herbal remedies are best used as a water based, cold in temperature, sweet, and tart flavored recipe. Herbal honeys, lemonades, oxymels, shrubs, switchels, teas, and tonics are especially helpful for beating the summer heat.

Degrees of Herbal Cooling: according to ancient Greek herbalism, energetic qualities such as warm, cool, dry, and damp vary by degrees. The degree of cooling for an herb or plant depends on how the cold energetic manifests in the body.

• Cooling to the 1st degree: Refreshing: cucumber, lemon, lettuce, and peach leaf are helpful when heat has not yet settled in the body on a hot day.

• Cooling to the 2nd degree: Anti-inflammatory or Refrigerant: elderberry, elderflower, hibiscus petal, lemon balm leaf, rose petals, and rosehips are ideal for heat manifesting as inflammation, internal heat, emotional stress, irritability, anger, and fever.

• Cooling to the 3rd degree: Thickening: California poppy, lavender buds, and yarrow aerial parts reduce perspiration, astringe tissues, and slow fluid loss.

• Cooling to the 4th degree: Anodyne: these herbs affect consciousness and are only used in extreme circumstances.