Chamomile

We’re doing another herb today for the series that we’ve been doing and today we’ve gotten to chamomile!

Many of you are probably familiar with this herb as an ingredient, but hopefully you’ll learn some new stuff about how it grows, the specific benefits, and where to find it in the wild.

Plant Profile:

Scientific Name: Chamaemelum nobile as well as a few other species in the same family.

Preferred Habitat: Meadows, farmland, pastures

Edible Parts: Flowers and leaves

Distribution: All over Europe, Asia, parts of Africa, and North America

Harvest Season: Generally midsummer through fall depending on location and species

Key Identifiers: Small daisy-like flowers with fern-like leaves, growth is usually about 1-2ft tall

Toxic Look-Alikes: This can look at a glance like any of the fleabane species (we have several in North America) which are also used medicinally but are not what you want if you’re looking for the specific benefits of chamomile

Nutrition:

Since this is a medicinal herb, there aren’t really nutrition facts as much as there is medicinal benefits which I’ll list here:

• Has cancer-fighting antioxidants (specifically breast, prostate, uterine, skin, and digestive cancers)

• Lowers blood sugar levels

• Reduces LDL (bad cholesterol)

• Commonly used to improve immune system and relieve colds

• Eases anxiety and depression

• Improves skin health

• Improves sleep quality

*Be cautious if you are pregnant or breastfeeding as this has not been studied with chamomile much yet.

*Also be cautious if you have allergies to the aster family such as ragweed or chrysanthemum

Uses

Chamomile is usually made into teas but can be eaten as a salad green and flower, added to desserts, breads, soaps, tinctures, salves, mixed drinks, kombuchas, and more.

I seriously recommend checking out Pinterest sometime to see all of the possible recipes, it’s pretty cool what people do with it!

I’ve also heard of people using it as a lawn replacement which is cool but other plants might be better suited to that. Chamomile wouldn’t probably need to be mowed but it can only take light foot traffic and tends to do better in full sun like a lot of meadow plants.

The flower has a slight fruity sweet taste, and the leaves tend to be more muted and herbal.

One of my favorite things is that chamomile is sometimes known as a “children’s herb” because it’s very safe for children to use! It’s a great after-dinner herb to take because it promotes healthier sleep and digestion.

Growth Habits

Chamomile has naturalized in North America and can be found in pastures and fields all over the place.

Chamomile grows as a perennial plant and most will flower in the first year!

This is another one of those flowers that is so easy to grow that I wonder why more people don’t grow it.

There are a lot of plants commonly called “chamomile” that are in the same family. We have a “wild” German chamomile that grows in pastures around me, and we grow a different species of chamomile (Cota tinctoria) which is a little more distantly related, but it is very pretty and grows large flowers.

Chamomile also acts as a great plant for guilds and attracts pollinators (hoverflies, beneficial wasps, honeybees, ladybugs, and native bees) while repelling some pests (mostly mosquitoes) and the tea can be used to treat fungal infections in plants.

Cultivars

There are actually a handful of options for what you could grow! Most of them aren’t a ton of different colors or anything but they have some distinct characteristics:

• German Chamomile - The classic small white flowers

• Zloty Lan - A Polish variety of a different species (Matricaria recutita) that grows larger flowers than usual

• Roman Chamomile - A lower-growing variety that produces fewer flowers

• Kelway Golden Daisy - The large yellow variety we grow. Very large flowers, more distantly related

• Bodegold Chamomile - An improved German chamomile with more flavor and earlier bloom time

And if you’re interested in a lawn that includes chamomile, there’s a Mow No More Mix from Territorial Seed Co. that features chamomile as well as some other daisy species.

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