Sylybum Marianum (L)
By Bill Freedman
As we scrounge the ground for miles around for mushrooms, our attention is mainly limited to the most colorful and dramatic members of the communities which we are seeking. The living background against which our major performers appear includes plants and animals we think of as ‘weeds” or “bugs’. We don’t usually take time to develop the appreciation that many of the most common inhabitants of the earth deserve. But if we were to stop to research and communicate with them, I’m sure that each slug and dandelion would have an interesting story to tell. Here is a story told by a common weed we pass on many of our field trips. Here is the tale of a Milk Thistle, which may prove to be life saving in cases where deadly Amanitas have been eaten:
I am a humble member of the Compositae or Sunflower family. My flower head is composed of many bracts, each one an individual flower, just like the Sunflower producing all those delicious seeds on its single flower head. A lot of us have yellow flowers, but my tribe, (like the Indians, we’re listed into groups called tribes), usually has purple flowers, (some are red heads), and very prickly leaves and flower heads. We’re the ‘thistle’ tribe. I hope thistle give you something to remember us by. 35 thistle genera are found on all continents but South America. Most of us come from the Mediterranean region, which is where you’ll find my roots.
It gets lonely when I realize that I represent an entire genus. I am the only species. But that may make it easier for you to remember me. My general name is “Silybum”. I was first dignified with that ancient term by a human from France named Michel Adanson, about 1763. “Silybon” is what the Greeks called the old folks in my tribe.
Actually the written record of our family tradition begins about 50 AD when healer Dioscorides, who described many plants with medicinal uses, gave us a prominent place on his list. My personal or species name is “marianum”, selected for me by Joseph Gaertner, a physician from Stuttgart, about 1765. This was very appropriate, because people have always thought of me as belonging in the medical profession. I have been prized for helping people with liver disease.
Experiments in Austria and Germany suggest that a commercial extract made from my seeds, named “Silybinin”, protected dogs from dying when given lethal doses of amanitin, the dreaded poison found in the deadliest of mushrooms, The “Death Angel, Amanita phalloides, and the “Spring Death Angel”, Amanita ocreata, have found a home in the West where they help nourish your trees. Don’t eat them. If you were to accidentally ingest those mushrooms or other poisonous amanitin-containing mushrooms in Austria or Germany, the doctors would treat you with my Silybinin. Physicians have tried me in America, but are skeptical about my healing properties. They should try me more. I’m really good at this.
However, although other plants have had the opportunity to travel to other countries to be used for medical uses and I’ve enjoyed visits to many places, somehow I was never very popular in China. So you won't find me in any of their herbal books.
I have a very religious history. Old country tradition claims that milk from the Virgin Mary fell upon my typically broad, green, glossy leaves, causing that characteristic white marbling you always see along my ribs. Indeed, pious folk call me “St. Mary’s Milk Thistle” because of this belief. And, of course, that is where my species name comes from. With all honesty, though, we have never personally claimed that our juices can help women give milk.
Although I am generous and usually passive, don’t try to hassle with me without my forewarning you. Because I am so tasty, it has been necessary protect myself from being nibbled into extinction So I am heavily armed with sharp yellow stickery prickles along my lobed or wavey leaf borders and outside of my seed capsule, There was a time not long ago when human beings carefully plucked my young spring leaves to be eaten raw as salad or boiled as a pot herb. My stalks were peeled and eaten, and my roots taste very much like salsify when cooked. When the spines have been removed from my lush ripe head, I can be eaten raw or cooked to taste something like my cousin Artichoke.
My flowers are 2 inch rose-purple gently scented tufts on 4-6 foot stalks, (I don’t know about you but the stalk truly brought me, you see). The small leaves growing from the stalk are very shy and clasp themselves tightly around the stems. Bees are partial to me when I bloom, for my sweet nectar. When I host a party for Painted Lad butterfly larvae, it is usually on me. And I love to feed the friendly birds who visit when my seeds are mature, although I wish they’d leave their droppings someplace else. My large, smooth seeds are spread by the wind, supported by a parachute of big, bristly hairs.
I doubt that you know that I have many admirers or that my seeds can still be purchased from ethnobotanical seed companies. You see, some people think that I’m more than a weed, even that I’m pretty. They use me as an ornamental. You can be sure that I reward them by keeping their kids and pets out of the bushes!
Ranchers don’t like me, Their dumb cattle don’t know how to handle my barbs. And our families produce many young when we grow on dry overgrazed fields and pastures. We don’t need much water. A nasty seed weevil has been imported from Italy because he loves to eat us. But be careful, remember the damage humans have done to Hawaii. Rynocyllis conicusfeeds on other plants as well, and may be a costly insect pest consuming desirable vegetable crops.
I’m not a fussy plant, you know. I don’t like competition, so look for me in abandoned areas by railroad tracks or disturbed soil along roadsides You’ll see me all over the place, once you get know me. Some years I get lazy, my appetite is off and I don’t feel like putting up with the bother of making flowers. So I skip a year. So the botanist call me a “biennial”. Who cares?
Did you know that I have been called a ‘clod-buster’? I’m tough. When I was brought to California, the ranchers used to chop me up and make me swim in 55 gallon drums of water. Then they would spread me on their hard, compacted soil to loosen it up for sowing seed. You can see that I have been useful to some farmers. Unfortunately, I arrived in North America too late to be of much value to the aborigines who once lived here.
Members of my group are most proud of our reputation as healers. In the old country, it was thought that we increased lactation in nursing mothers. Our leaves have been used for loss of appetite or dyspepsia, but be sure to remove the thorns or you’ll never get rid of your stomachache.
For many years, my seeds were prescribed as a specific for “stitches in the side”. Even today they are used for diseases of the liver or gall bladder or mushroom poisoning,
Perhaps you’ll respect me more if I tell you it is officially recorded that my extracts include histamine, tyramine and the flavonoid, silymarine. In some people, I take water out of their bodies and reduce high blood pressure, which explains why doctors gave me to folks with cardiovascular disease. And leg ulcers and varicose veins have improved too. If your liver isn’t feeling so hot these days, try me. And if you are at death’s door, call me, I’ll pull you through.