A rodent pruned my horehound a few weeks ago and now I have two nice stems.

It caught my eye at the end of the DC State Fair Seedling Swap, during the free-for-all where you grab what you want after completing the organized rounds of selecting seedlings.

Horehound.  It sounded old.

Whatever it was, it was a tiny bumpy-leafed plant growing in an even tinier plastic seedling starter cell.  Three sat there.  I swiped two, selected more plants, then let the toddler make her own selection (she had already endured her version of eternity during the swap and the exciting grabfest caught her interest).

She immediately grabbed a horehound.

The itty bitty pot fit perfectly in her clutch as she carried it to our bag, she wanted to get it in there to “protect it” as I said for the others.  She said horehound with heft and a smile.

A month later, I’ve finally gotten around to looking up horehound.  It turns out horehound has been a cough remedy for thousands of years and is still a common ingredient in cough medicine.

Sustainable Urban Living  has a horehound page that jives nicely with my recently discovered favorite herb book.  It even includes the horehound candy drops recipe and an easy cough syrup recipe.

If making candy or syrup exceeds your domestic ambitions, The Complete Book of Herbs (the above mentioned favorite), instructs:

At the first sign of a cold: finely chop nine small horehound leaves, mix with 1 tablespoon honey and eat slowly to ease sore throat or cough.  Repeat several times if necessary.

Easy, breezy – bye bye coughy sneezy!

Whether the toddler grabbed the horehound because it was the smallest thing there, loved the name or just copied me, I love that we are growing cough medicine on the back steps.