Buttonbush

Recurring low fevers with a coated tongue and sluggish appetite, calling for a bitter tonic before more stimulating remedies are considered

Watery, low-grade edema with scant urination in an otherwise debilitated patient

Overview. Buttonbush is a wetland shrub of the coffee family, native throughout eastern and central North America, recognized by its distinctive spherical white flower heads. The bark, particularly root bark, was the part used by nineteenth century American physiomedicalist and eclectic practitioners, who valued its pronounced bitterness as a tonic and mild febrifuge. It has no significant place in contemporary herbal practice and is rarely used today, its history preserved mainly in historical texts rather than modern clinical use.

Clinical Notes. Historical physiomedicalist and eclectic writers reached for buttonbush root bark chiefly as a bitter tonic to rouse a sluggish digestion and as a mild agent for low, lingering fevers, sometimes likened in this narrow role to other bitter febrifuges of the period such as boneset or dogwood bark.

Properties and Uses. The bark is a slow, but quite decided tonic, of the stimulating and moderately relaxing class. It gives vigor to the stomach and bowels in atonic conditions, and slightly promotes the alvine and hepatic functions, and also that of the kidneys.

Description. Natural Order, Rubiaceae. Shrubs, common in wet places, throughout the United States and Canada, five to fifteen feet high. Leaves opposite, or sometimes in whorls of three, without stipules; ovate-oblong, acute at both extremities, on short red petioles, with a tumid base; two to four inches in length. Flowers terminal, in densely aggregated, globose heads; creamy white; calyx tubular, four-toothed; corolla tubular, four-toothed. Blossoms in July and August, when its pretty and somewhat fragrant heads of flowers, more than an inch in diameter, make an attractive appearance. The bark is quite bitter, and yields its properties to water, and to water and alcohol.