WATER PEPPER
Polygonum punctatum
COMMON NAMES: Smartweed, American water smartweed, arsesmart, pepperwort.
FEATURES: This annual plant is a member of the buckwheat family, growing in England and America in
ditches, lowlands, among rubbish, and around brooks and water courses.
The herb has a smooth stem, 1–2 feet, with a reddish or greenish brown color of the often decumbent
base. The leaves are alternate, lanceolate, petiolate, with dots of thin skin throughout. The small greenish
white or greenish pink flowers are loose, slender, and drooping with erect spikes. It flowers in August
and September. The taste is bitter, pugnent, and acrid. Water pepper should be collected and made into
tincture or tea while fresh, as age decreases its properties and results.
MEDICINAL PART: The whole herb.
SOLVENTS: Alcohol, water.
BODILY INFLUENCE: Antiseptic, diuretic, diaphoretic, emmenagogue.
USES: The infusion in cold water has been found serviceable in gravel, colds and coughs, and in milk
sickness. For the pain of suppressed menstruation, taken internally; fomentations wrung from the hot tea
and applied to the lower back, where there is usually pain, will soon bring relief. Of use in female
obstruction as a feminine douche when in pain, itching, or leukorrhea. In cholera, if the patient is wrapped
in a sheet moistened with a hot decoction, it will aid recovery; also taken internally but making sure the
bowels are active. The infusion in cold water forms an excellent local application in the sore mouth of
nursing mothers and in mercurial salivation.
DOSE: 1 teaspoonful of the herb, cut small, to 1 cupful of warm water; taken in wineglassful, or teacupful,
amounts. The decoction or infusion in hot water is not so active as when prepared in cold or warm water.
Of the tincture, 30–60 minims.
EXTERNALLY: The fresh leaves bruised with the leaves of plantain (Plantago major) and moistened with
oil of turpentine and applied to the skin will speedily relieve chronic erysipelatous inflammations.