Common Yarrow

General Information

• Plants: Aromatic, perennial herbs, 8 to 24 inches tall, with lacy, fern-like leaves divided into many small, ultimate segments.
• Flowers: White, composed of many small heads in a flat-topped, corymb-like arrangement.
• Fruits: Small, flat, smooth achenes without a pappus.
• Flowering Season: April to October.
• Habitat/Range: Found from sea level to alpine slopes throughout the temperate northern hemisphere.¹

Blackfeet Ethnobotany^*

by Darnell and Smokey Rides At The Door

The Blackfeet name for yarrow is Aux Tok Soo Ki. It translates to 'pine stem' or 'gopher tail.' By manner of tea, dried, or fresh, the yarrow plant traditionally has many Blackfeet medicinal uses, such as acting as a hemostatic. The flower bud is used to numb a toothache. In conjunction with other plants, ailments such as colds, lung congestion, burns, earaches, boils, sores, and diarrhea. Yarrow also is used to ward off insects such as mosquitoes.²

From the Journals

by H. Wayne Phillips

With Lewis’s training in botany and his mother’s herbal medicine, Lewis would have been well acquainted with the plant.³ The explorers collected a specimen of yarrow on May 20, 1806, near Long Camp [Camp Chopunnish] in present-day Idaho County, Idaho. On May 21, Lewis referred to the many plants with lacy leaves in the area:

today we divided the remnant of our store of merchandize among our party with a view that each should purchase therewith a parsel of roots and bread from the natives as his stores for the rocky mountains for there seems but little probability that we shall be enabled to make any dryed meat for that purpose. . . . we would make the men collect these roots themselves but there are several species of hemlock which are so much like the cows [cous bisquit-root] that it is difficult to discriminate them from the cows and we are affraid that they might poison themselves.⁴

Additional Information: Yarrow has been identified and used for millennia. Initially given the genus name of Achillea by Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778), a Swedish natural scientist known best for standardizing binomial nomenclature, a system of naming organisms still used today. This name was chosen because of Greek mythologies most prevalent warrior, Achilles, was said to have allegedly carried yarrow into battle. The plant has been used for its medicinal properties by countless groups of people over the course of human history. Worldwide, there are over 80 species of yarrow.⁵

^*While traditional medicine is still practiced in many cultures including the Blackfeet culture and has many uses, please do not consume any plant material without consultation of a health professional.