Sweet Everlasting

Although sweet everlasting is aromatic and inviting, it makes a rather bitter tea and it is quite astringent. Morton wrote that sweet everlasting was the most common native cold remedy in South Carolina, where it was widely taken as tea sweetened with sugar or honey. In the American EclecticDispensatory (1855), King noted that the leaves and flowers, when chewed and swallowed relieved sore throats and mouth ulcers. Morton also noted that the plant was often boiled with pine tops (Pinus palustris) and wax myrtle (Myrica cerifera) or salt bush (Baccharis halmifolia) or gallberry (Ilex glabra) or mullein (Verbascum Thapsus) and to used treat colds or flu.

Modern herbalist Matthew Wood tells us that sweet everlasting was and still is an important Cherokee medicine, and he shares intriguing bits of folklore in The Earthwise Herbal (2009) about how this plant received one of its many nicknames, “rabbit tobacco.” He writes at length about its use in respiratory ailments including asthma.