Joe Pye, an Indian Medicine man who became friendly with the early colonists of Massachusetts and treated their various ills, never came this way. However the purple flowering weed that bears his name is one of the picturesque plants of autumn here in the hills. And right now, as the September days dwindle down, the Joe Pye weeds are lavishing the rural landscape with eye-fetching beauty.
To mountain folks long wise to the signs of nature they are harbingers of fall and the sweet season. For they know summer is nearly over when the tall, conspicuous plants begin to tinge the countryside with crushed raspberry. Long before the folks of the hills ever heard of old Joe Pye, they gave the plant named for him a much more fitting name – queen of the meadow.
According to legend, the Joe Pye after whom these flowers were named is supposed to have been an Indian herb doctor who lived in New England in colonial times and cured varied ills by his skillful use of these plants. He is credited with curing typhus fever patients by dosing them with a brew made from the roots of the plant that produced sweating. He also made a tonic of the roots to treat stomach ailments. His successes with the use of the plant caused the colonists to give it his name.
The Cherokee Indians here in the mountains also used the plant for treating certain diseases and ailments. From the roots they made a warm decoction for treating a disease which was described by old Runaway Swimmer, greatest of the Cherokee medicine men, as a clogging up of the throat passages so as to seriously interfere with breathing and utterance. Some authorities believe the disease was diphtheria .
The Cherokee also made great use of the roots as a remedy for kidney stones and gallstones. And they used a warm decoction of the root as a wash for stiff joints. From the dried leaves and flowers they made a tea to produce sweating. They also regarded it as a love medicine. The medicine men contended that if a young man would hold some in his mouth while talking to a young woman, or while wooing, the success of the conversation would be assured.
Passing on the uses to their white neighbors, the Cherokee’s queen of the meadow, in time found its way pharmaceutical firms. The Wilcox Drug Company at Boone, which was one of the oldest and biggest clearing houses in the Appalachians for wild growing herbal plants, marketed a small amount every year.
Joe Pye weed grows in rich woods, along the roadsides, in wet meadows, and almost anywhere in moist ground. It grows from four to twelve high on a stem as stiff and straight as a lance. The large, coarsely toothed leaves are arranged in whorls along the stem, with three to six leaves per whorl.
The numerous flower clusters at the tops of the stems are grouped into a huge, frosty pink, rounded or pyramidal head. And each head is made up of eight to twenty tubular flowers. The wine-colored sprays are often used in flower arrangements for a feathery effect.
Their real beauty is to see them growing wild as they lift their massed heads of purple to the sun. And right now, here and elsewhere throughout the mountains, the great sprays of the Joe Pye weeds are in all their glory. For they are truly “queen of the meadow”.