In 1928, a researcher named Frances Densmore published a 122-page report, titled Uses of Plants by the Chippewa Indians, through the Smithsonian’s Bureau of American Ethnology. She had spent three decades collecting it – traveling to White Earth, Red Lake, Cass Lake, and Mille Lacs, recording nearly 200 plants and their uses from people who still knew them firsthand. The Bureau understood what was happening. The generation that carried this knowledge was dying, and once it was gone, it was gone.
The US Army’s FM 21-76, first published in 1957, drew on exactly this kind of ethnobotanical record when it compiled its sections on edible and medicinal plants. The manual was written for soldiers who might find themselves stranded with nothing. The plant knowledge in it was old before the Army ever touched it.
Most of those plants are still growing in the same places they always were – and most of them are probably in your backyard right now.
The Northeast: Wild Lettuce
Start in the Northeast, where wild lettuce colonizes the edges – roadsides, abandoned lots, the margins of fields where mowing stops. It grows tall, sometimes six feet, with spiny leaves along a central stem that bleeds milky white sap when cut. That sap is called lactucarium, and it’s where the medicine is.
The compounds lactucin and lactucopicrin act on the central nervous system in a way researchers have compared to mild sedation. Analgesic effects in animal studies came in comparable to ibuprofen. Traditional uses run toward headaches, muscle pain, and the kind of deep nerve ache that doesn’t respond to surface treatments.
Harvest the leaves before the plant flowers, when potency is highest in the foliage. After flowering, the useful compounds migrate toward the seeds and roots. A tea from dried leaves is the most accessible preparation – tincturing the sap in alcohol concentrates the effect considerably.
But by far my favorite way to use it is by making the famous Painkiller in a Jar. And what surprised me the most was that it contains… vodka. Yes, that’s right. Very potent, very powerful, but deinfetly nit for kids. The tincture method was approved by a doctor and it’s a simple yet unique way to have all the properties of these amazing plant.
Try it yourself and tell us what you think:
The Pacific Northwest: Devil’s Club
Cross the Rockies and drop into the wet old-growth forests of Washington, Oregon, coastal Alaska, and northern Idaho, and the landscape changes completely. So does the medicine cabinet. Devil’s club (Oplopanax horridus) is hard to miss: enormous maple-like leaves, stems covered in brittle yellow spines that break off in skin and fester. It grows in the deep shade of old-growth forest, along stream banks, in the understory where almost nothing else does.
Coast Salish, Haida, Tlingit, Tsimshian, and dozens of other Northwest peoples used the inner bark as a poultice for joint pain, arthritis, and deep muscle injuries.
Click on the map below for more info:
The anti-inflammatory compounds are chemically related to those found in American ginseng – devil’s club sits in the same plant family, Araliaceae. The connection isn’t coincidental. Indigenous healers on both coasts identified similar properties in related plants centuries before Western pharmacology had a framework for explaining why.
Preparation requires removing the spines carefully before working with the bark, because they cause real injury and the reaction can be severe. This is not a plant for casual field experimentation. But for anyone spending serious time in Pacific Northwest terrain, knowing what it is and what it does is worth the study.
The South and Southeast: Prickly Ash
Drop down through the mid-Atlantic states into the South and you start finding prickly ash – called the toothache tree by the Cherokee, the Creek, the Choctaw, and over a dozen other tribal groups documented by the USDA.
This map shows you the wonders of the South:
It grows along fence rows, woodland edges, and roadsides from Texas and Florida north through Arkansas and Virginia. Two species divide the territory: Zanthoxylum clava-herculis covers the Gulf states, Zanthoxylum americanum pushes north through the Midwest into the Great Lakes.
Chew a piece of bark and within a minute your mouth goes numb. Genuinely anesthetized -the kind of local effect that handles dental pain, sore gums, and mouth injuries better than most things in a bathroom cabinet. The Cherokee poulticed the inner bark for rheumatism and sharp joint pain. The Chippewa used bark infusions for back pain and cramps. Densmore documented both uses in her 1928 report.
Look for a multi-stemmed shrub or small tree with corky, warty bumps on the bark and compound leaves alternating along the stem. The identification is tactile as much as visual – chew a small piece of bark to confirm. If your tongue goes electric, you have the right plant.
Find out more about the uses of Prickly Ash here. You will find out how to use it, what for and a few amazing recipes that will give you valuable knowledge for life.
The Midwest and Plains
The tallgrass and shortgrass prairies stretch from the Dakotas down through Kansas and Oklahoma, cut through with rivers and creek bottoms where a different set of plants takes over.
The Lakota, Omaha, Pawnee, and other Plains tribes pulled real medicine from both worlds, prairie roots built for drought and fire, and waterside bark and leaf suited to wet ground. Two of those remedies went on to shape modern medicine cabinets more than most people realize.
Echinacea
Move west into the open grasslands and two plants dominate the medicine map. The first is echinacea – the purple coneflower that blankets the prairies of Kansas, Nebraska, the Dakotas, Oklahoma, and Missouri. American garden culture has absorbed it so completely that its wild history barely gets mentioned anymore.
The Lakota called it the toothache plant. Fresh root held against an aching tooth produces a tingling, numbing sensation within minutes – the same local anesthetic effect as prickly ash, different chemistry.
For wildcrafting the root, harvest from large established stands and take sparingly. The fresh root is the most potent form for pain. Dried root loses potency faster than most people realize.
Even if it’s so common, practices such as landscaping may destroy this plant in your area. So, if you don’t want to hunt the perfect day in spring to pick it, then I have a better idea for you.
Dr. Nicole Apelian has this amazing kit inspired by her wide experience with 10 medicinal seeds that can also be found in the USA Seed Vault in Sweden. They are on that list because of their medicinal value. And now you can have them in your backyard.
Here’s what Nicole told us when we asked her about the story behind it:
“I made this Medicinal Garden Kit because I wanted people to take their health into their own hands, the way I learned to. Picture stepping into your backyard and smelling lavender and chamomile, knowing you can pick any of those plants and turn it into a remedy. That garden is your pharmacy when regular ones are closed or looted. I’ve gathered 10 herbs inside the kit, every seed handpicked for quality.”
Dr. Nicole’s medicinal kit puts that whole list within reach of your back door, so you’re not depending on whether echinacea survived this year’s landscaping crews near you. ➡️ Plant your own painkiller patch with the Medicinal Garden Kit
Willow Bark
The second plant needs no introduction to anyone who has spent time near water. Willow grows in every state, in creek banks, marsh edges, drainage ditches, pond margins, anywhere water pools or runs.
The medicine is in the inner bark, in a compound called salicin, which the body converts to salicylic acid. Same pathway as aspirin. Willow bark was the raw material that eventually led to aspirin’s synthesis in the 1890s, and the Chippewa, the Cherokee, and dozens of other tribes were using it centuries before any chemist isolated the active compound.
Strip the green inner bark in spring, when sap is running and the bark peels easily from young branches. Simmer a small handful in water for twenty minutes. The taste is bitter. For headaches, joint pain, and fever it does real work. Don’t give it to children with fevers – the same contraindication that applies to aspirin applies here.
Everywhere – Plantain
The last plant on this map grows in all fifty states, and the odds are good it’s within a hundred yards of wherever you’re reading this. Broadleaf plantain (Plantago major) colonizes compacted soil, lawn edges, gravel paths, cracks in pavement, and trailsides. It came over with European settlers, spread so aggressively that some tribes called it “white man’s footprint,” and hasn’t stopped since.
Chew a fresh leaf into a paste and press it against a sore tooth, an inflamed cut, a sting, or an infected wound. It won’t replace stitches or a root canal, but as an immediate response to acute pain or infection while you figure out what comes next, nothing beats it for availability.
Edible, non-toxic, and impossible to misidentify once you know the parallel veins running the length of each blade – three to five prominent ribs that distinguish it from every lookalike.
So, next time you’re out on a hike or foraging and a bug or nettle gets you, make sure you’ve learned the anti-itch plantain method. Trust me, this is the kind of information that pays off right when you expect it least!
Other Plants Worth Mentioning
The six plants above cover the most documented options, but the ethnobotanical record runs deeper. Several regions have plants with equally strong histories that rarely get mentioned in the same conversation.
- In the Appalachians and across the Northeast, black cohosh grows in rich woodland soils under mature forest canopy. The Iroquois and Cherokee used the root for rheumatism and joint pain. It was listed in the US Pharmacopeia from 1820 to 1926. Prepare the root as a decoction. It builds slowly and suits chronic pain better than emergencies.
- Passionflower grows across the Southeast into Texas and up through the Appalachians. The Cherokee used it for headaches and tension pain. The aerial parts, leaves and stems, prepared as a tea. Works best for the kind of pain that sits behind the eyes or across the shoulders.
- In the Southeast and lower Midwest, spilanthes produces a numbing effect within thirty seconds of chewing the flower heads. Faster than prickly ash, stronger on mucous membranes. For dental pain specifically, it is one of the most effective plants on the continent.
- In the Rocky Mountain meadows, arnica is strictly topical. Prepared as an infused oil or poultice, it works on bruising, muscle soreness, and joint inflammation. The Blackfoot used it for swelling and muscle pain. Do not take it internally.
- In the Southwest, yerba mansa grows in the alkaline wetlands of the Rio Grande corridor. The Pueblo peoples used it for inflammation and infected wounds. Spanish colonial records document its use further back than almost anything else on this map.
- California poppy grows wild across California and Oregon. The analgesic properties come from different alkaloids entirely. The Luiseño used it for toothache and sleeplessness. The whole aerial plant prepared as a tea.
What Densmore Knew
The knowledge in her 1928 report came from people who used these plants the way anyone uses a medicine cabinet. The reason it had to be documented at all is the same reason most people reading this don’t already know it. It nearly disappeared in a single generation.
Luckily, it didn’t. So, to preserve this knowledge, find one plant from this map that grows in your region. Learn it well enough to identify it in every season.
And you can start by keeping one of the best foraging atlases ever put together within arm’s reach.
Dr. Nicole Apelian’s Forager’s Guide to Wild Foods is what pulled me into herbal remedies in the first place. The day I really looked, I saw how much of this country’s medicine was sitting untouched in my own backyard. That’s how I knew I couldn’t go another day without learning to recognize these native miracles for myself.
400 plants, each with a range map so you’re only matching what grows where you stand, color photos from several angles, and a poisonous-lookalike section that names the twin that’ll put someone in the ground. That’s what makes it the foraging atlas I reach for first, and right now it’s 70% off.
Get the Forager’s Guide this month and explore the natural remedies that make our country one of the richest medicine cabinets on earth!
You may also like:
23 Medicinal Plants the Native Americans Used on a Daily Basis
The Antibiotic That Probably Grows in Your Own Backyard (VIDEO)
12 Poisonous Plants That Might Be Growing on Your Property
10 Medicinal Seeds You Must Plant for a Complete Backyard Pharmacy
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