Blue Snakeweed

MEDICINAL PROPERTIES
Blue Snakeweed is a herb up to 1.2 m tall. Flowers are blue. This plant can easily be confused withStachytarpheta jamaicensis. The plant has long tap roots. Leaves are opposite, thin, shallowly toothed. Flowers are borne in a terminal spike, embedded in the rachis, which is 1-3 mm in diameter. Flower-tube is curved, dark blue to whitish. Blue Snakeweed is native to south America, cultivated in various parts of the world.
The whole plant of Blue Snakeweed is used for back pain to help in acquiring natural green colour. The fresh leaves are consumed in bush tea as a “cooling” tonic and blood cleanser, to treat “asthma” and “ulcerated stomachs”. Tea brewed from this species has been shown to cause a dose-dependent “fall in the blood pressure” of normal rabbits. However, the tea has also been observed to cause a “mild non-dose dependent systematic toxicity” in various tissues throughout the body, “such as congestion, fatty changes, and necrosis in liver, blood vessels, kidney, lung and testis, but the brain, eyes, intestines and heart were essentially normal.