SENEGA
Polygala senega
COMMON NAMES: Snakeroot, milkwort, rattlesnake root, mountain flax.
FEATURES: Polygala is a genus of more than five hundred annual and perennial herbs and shrubs of the
family Polygalaceae. Most species are subtropical, but nearly two hundred are North American. Polygala
senega, known as mountain flax or senega snakeroot, grows from New Brunswick to Alberta and
southward to Georgia and Arkansas. This indigenous plant has a perennial, firm, hairy, branching root,
with a thick bark, and sends up several annual stems that are erect, smooth, 8–14 inches high,
occasionally tinged with red. The leaves are alternate, nearly sessile lanceolate with a sharpish point,
smooth. The new, small white flowers consists of five sepals and three petals; the capsules are small,
two-celled, and two-valved.
Found in rocky woods and on hillsides, flowering in July. The English name is milkwort. The botanical
name means “much milk,” which has been applied to some species for their increase of milk flow. Its
chemical constituents are polygalic, virginic, pectic, and tannic acids, an oil, gum, albumin, salts of
alumina, silica, magnesium, and iron. For medicinal purposes, gather in the autumn just before the frost;
the taste is bitter, though somewhat sweet.
MEDICINAL PART: Root.
SOLVENTS: Water, dilute alcohol.
BODILY INFLUENCE: Diaphoretic, diuretic, expectorant; large doses emetic and cathartic.
USES: In the early part of the eighteenth century Scottish physician Tennant heard from the Seneca tribe of
the use of senega in cases of snakebite and investigated its merits. He discovered that an infusion of the
dried roots would actively promote salivation, desirable in chronic catarrh, croup, asthma, and lung
disorders of pleurisy and pneumonia, but that it is too irritating for recent coughs of active inflammatory
diseases. It increases the secretions and circulation and is indicated where there is prostration from blood
poisoning, smallpox, asthma, diseases of the lungs, bronchitis, chronic catarrh, croup, dropsy, and