As the clouds flowed over the mountain socking us in for awhile, I noticed a cluster of turtlehead—sopping wet and dripping—growing near where we stood. In the genus "Chelone," which means turtle in Greek, this lovely wildflower is so called because its blooms supposedly look like the heads of pink turtles.
"The Indians use a strong decoction of the whole plant in eruptive diseases, biles, hemorrhoids, sores, etc," wrote the early American naturalist Constantine Rafinesque. "Few plants promise to become more useful in skillful hands; it ought to be tried in yellow fever and bilious fever."
Biles and bilious fever? I'm not sure if we have worried that much about these two maladies since the early 1800s when Rafinesque wrote about turtlehead but even so, we must remember this plant. It could come in handy should there be an outbreak of any of the eruptive diseases.
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