Everything You Need to Know About Feverfew
Everything You Need to Know About Feverfew
**Feverfew (Tanecetum parthenium) is my favorite medicinal herb for headaches (here’s my top 15 herbs for headaches). Not only do I grow Feverfew for medicinal purposes, it is a stunningly beautiful perennial with little white daisy-type flowers and lovely green leaves.
**Feverfew is super easy to grow in your flower garden or herb garden. It can be grown in containers and remains evergreen in the winter and is quite frost hardy.
**I’m going to try my hardest to persuade you to use Feverfew in your household and I also want to persuade you to grow your own Feverfew too.
Medicinal Uses of Feverfew:
**Feverfew is a fantastic medicinal tool for your home. Here is a list of medicinal uses of Feverfew:
Feverfew is an excellent and famous remedy for migraines and headaches.
- It is believed that if you eat some Feverfew leaves everyday, you can reduce your chance of getting migraines. However, the leaves can produce canker sores, so some people will eat 3-5 Feverfew leaves between buttered bread daily to get the benefits of feverfew without the canker sores.
- Instead of eating the leaves, you can also make an herbal tea for relieving your headache/migraine. Here are a few great headache tea combinations. Here is a list of 15 herbs for headaches, so you can make your own herbal tea combination.
- My favorite way to use Feverfew for headaches/migraines is in tincture-form. Tinctures are fairly easy to make. Check out how I made my Hawthorn tincture and simply use Feverfew leaves instead of Hawthorns in the tincture recipe.
Feverfew can bring relief from arthritis and/or joint pain.
- Feverfew has similar medicinal abilities like aspirin, and its’ anti-inflammatory properties can help ease the pain of sore muscles, joint pain, and/or arthritis. One of the best ways to use Feverfew for joints and muscles is in a homemade herbal salve in combination with other inflammation herbs. Click here to learn more about how to make a salve. Here’s a great list of other herbs that might help with joint pain.
Feverfew can be used for stress reduction and to get a restful sleep.
- Consider making an herbal tea with Feverfew and Borage to combat stress, or add Feverfew to this Nervous Insomnia Herbal Tea recipe.
How to Grow Feverfew:
**When using Feverfew as a medicinal herb, you use the leaves, either fresh or dried, for your herbal tea, tinctures, salves, etc. It is best to use the fresh leaves whenever possible, because it loses some medicinal benefits when the leaves are dried.
**You can dry the Feverfew flowers and add them to a DIY potpourri for some color.
Position:
**Feverfew does best in full sun.
**Make sure you give your Feverfew plant good soil with great drainage and regular watering.
Propagation:
**You can propagate Feverfew by seed quite easily. You can do cold stratification 1 week before sowing for best results, however, I have never had a problem growing Feverfew from seeds that I start indoors in peat pots (like these).
**Feverfew can also be propagated by cuttings and by root division.
**It also self-seeds regularly, so you can just let your Feverfew spread that way, too, as long as you aren’t too much of a planner person in your herb garden (yeah, I would go crazy if I let my Feverfew self-seed!).
Maintenance:
**If you planted your Feverfew in too much shade, you probably won’t see any flowers.
**If planted in full sun, after your Feverfew is finished flowering, make sure to cut back the tall flowering stalks.
**You might have some problems with aphids, so make sure to look for signs of aphid activity near your plant.
Harvesting:
**You can harvest Feverfew leaves at any time. Just make sure not to take too many leaves from one plant since that can stress your Feverfew plant.
So, how did I do? Are you going to grow Feverfew?
**If you are still not interested in growing feverfew, but you are interested in the medicinal benefits, you could always buy dried Feverfew or a Feverfew extract from a good-quality company like Mountain Rose Herbs. They have some amazing products!
**Consider learning more about Feverfew, other medicinal herbs, how to make tinctures/salves/etc., from Rosemary Gladstar in her book ‘Rosemary Gladstar’s Herbal Recipes for Vibrant Health‘. This has to be my favorite book of all time!
**I am no doctor. Feverfew has some warnings attached dealing with pregnant women and those with bleeding disorders. Please read more about Feverfew from other sources, like the ones that I mention in my Reference section.
**I would love to know if you are growing Feverfew! Please feel free to comment in the comment section below about your herb garden. 🙂 Hearing about fellow herb gardens makes my heart happy!
I just bought a feverfew plant and am excited to start my herb garden as soon as weather allows me to dig out a bed! To contain it should I keep it in a pot like I will with mint?
Thanks
No, you don’t have to contain it. It might self-seed, but it is perfectly manageable.
Thank you for sharing what you know about Feverfew! I plan to plant some in my herb garden this year. Do you know how quickly it spreads? Maybe I missed it in your information. Are there any herbs that it shouldn’t be planted by?
Thank you!
It doesn’t really spread, though it might self-seed. I haven’t had issues with it near other plants, but know that it gets pretty large/tall, so put it in the right space in your herb garden!
Would you know if Feverfew is any good at repelling flies in the house? My Feverfew arrived courtesy of the birds 😊
I have had it in my garden (grew 5 years ago from seed) and it flowers all year round till February. At this point I take off any old flowers and brown leaves. It is such a beautiful plant, especially the foliage. I find it pops up in cracks all over the garden and looks great. I harvest the flowers and make an oil infusion out of them. I then use this oil in skin creams. It is a great soother for itchy and stressed skin xx
Hi, Heidi!!
Do you have a link to your site for sharing your already tried-and-true recipes, please?
Feverfew already helps me with migraines, and I would just love to see what it can do for my dry, itchy skin!
Thank you kindly for your suggestion!
How do you use it for migraines ?
I make a tincture with the fresh leaves and take dropperfuls of the tincture when necessary. Otherwise, you can put a few leaves on sandwiches daily or make tea.
Thank you so much for this article. I started growing feverfew last year but wasn’t quite sure how to use it. So this has be very helpful. Excited about trying out some of the different uses. Thanks!
Thank you for the kind words! I really appreciate it!
Fewerfew loves my garden. I have re potted a few ones to offer on our plant sales.
I love how pretty they are.
Thanks for the great information. I’m growing it for the first time. Are there good companion plants to put with feverfew and any plants I should avoid planting it next to? Thank you!
I don’t think feverfew is strongly against or for any other plants. It is very easy going and delightful in any garden.
Hi, the homesteadgarden!
I have some feverfew seeds that I wish to plant, and I m wondering if they require cold stratification. The seeds that I have, have been indoors since I dried them with the leaves and stems last fall; it’s just now that I realize that they weren’t cold-stratified this winter, so of course, I m wondering if I should just plant them in the fall for next spring’s crop… what can you tell me about this, please?
Feverfew is delightfully easy to grow. They do not need cold stratification.
Can you take to much feverfew and if you can of on it how much is to much please using it for chronic migraines and making caplets with it
I am not a doctor and I cannot legally tell you how much feverfew to take. I highly suggest you talk to a clinical/registered herbalist in your area and they will help you figure out the correct ratios for your personal self. I personally only take feverfew tincture, a few drops at at time, at the first sign of a migraine. When I had chronic migraines, I took drops of tincture everyday until I had reduced symptoms. But again, you’ll need to talk to a doctor/herbalist for your own medicinal needs.
I’ve been wanting to grow this for a long time but just kind of put it aside. I even have the seeds! Is this something that will grow inside during the winter or does it need to have a dormant phase over the winter months? Is it cold hardy? Thanks, Cris!
Hi, great info. I got feverfew seedlings from a friend last year and forgot what they were as they spent the first year growing beautiful lacy nice to me smelling foliage. This year they were the first to leaf out and there is a huge shrubby riot of gorgeous flowers. The problem is my garden is a pollinator garden and feverfew is in the chrysanthemum family making strong insect repellent (the nice smell) in all of its parts. There are no bees on it or anywhere around it. Some small flies and wasps and curious flyers, but no sign of bees and I had seen them before this season. So for everyone’s information, this plant WILL repel bees. If that’s great, great, but if that’s not great then plant it somewhere away from flowers or trees needing pollination. I will be harvesting it and making the recipes you describe.
I have just got a Feverfew plant and want quite sure what it’s purpose was, this has been insightful. Thanks for taking some time to share your knowledge.
I have become interested in soap making and have made some lip balm with beeswax. Interested in experimenting with this new herb!
You say feverfew repels bees but not wasps .
Why is that ?
isn’t feverfew a pyrethrum flower that repels all insects ??
I’m wondering if feverfew will give a second blooming in the fall if I cut it back in mid July. It’s really sprawling all over, maybe because I never cut it last year at the end of the season.
It often does a second blooming for me. Perennials can be odd about that, and each individual plant decides whether it likes a severe pruning or not. 🙂
I have harvested my Feverfew stems and dried them in the sun. I crushed the leaves to powder and put the powder into capsules.
I just take a couple of capsules with water when I feel a migraine coming on, as I’m not really into teas.
What started as a volunteer in the garden has multiplied! (I could go into the feverfew biz!). It’s a pretty plant and I’m thrilled to know of its medicinal properties… but now I’m wondering, “Can I use it as a green?” Are there problems with actually eating feverfew leaves in a salad?
Can you make cold process soap with feverfew I have been growing it for two years now and use for headaches but would like to use it for something more
Hi am I able to use both the leaves and flowers?
Yes, you can use all the aerial parts of the plant.
Mine didn’t bloom and I will be moving it to a sunny spot pronto! Thank you for sharing that information. Exactly what I was looking for! I must say the leaves smelled pleasant to me. Since it didn’t bloom, and I purchased a plant, I wasn’t confident it was really feverfew, so I just hung the leaves on my back porch and enjoyed the aroma. My understanding is they were used at funeral homes in the past! Ha! Can’t wait to get the pretty flowers!
I’ve been haphazardly growing Feverfew for decades. I let them grow everywhere.
Considered a mosquito repellent plant. It kind of works that way around my house.
Rabbits never bother them. I let them grow in full shade too.
Makes great bouquets too!