# Coltsfoot (Tussilago farfara)

**Tussilagine**

**Known today as.** *Tussilago farfara*.

Kind: Plant  
Poisoning: Pyrrolizidine alkaloids (veno-occlusive disease) (https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/poisons/pyrrolizidine)

## What did Canale use it for?

Among the amulet herbs: hung about the neck, and used in fumigations and decoctions against hexes (ch. 10; see [the amulet herbs](https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/the-amulet-herbs)).

## What does modern science say?

A classic cough remedy; its liver-toxic pyrrolizidine alkaloids, which cause cancer in animals, now limit internal use. Senkirkine and the other pyrrolizidine alkaloids of the plant caused liver tumours in rats and a fatal case of veno-occlusive disease in an infant whose mother drank the tea; Germany forbade its sale, and an alkaloid-free cultivar, ‘Wien,’ was bred in Austria to keep the herb in use.

## Pharmacognosy and toxicology

- **senkirkine**: a pyrrolizidine alkaloid
- **tussilagone**: 
- **mucilage**: the soothing part

**Mechanism.** As comfrey.

**Dose.** Cumulative; an infant died of veno-occlusive disease from the mother’s tea.

**Standing.** Forbidden in Germany; an alkaloid-free cultivar is permitted.

## What lore surrounds it?

The flower was painted on the signs of apothecaries in Paris as the badge of the trade, and coltsfoot rock, the sweet of Lancashire, is still made from its extract.

## What did the older authorities say?

**Dioscorides and Pliny.** Both prescribe the smoke of the dried leaf, drawn through a reed, for the cough and the tightness of the chest: the oldest medicinal smoking in the Western record.

**Its name.** *Tussilago*, from *tussis*, the cough, and *agere*, to drive away; the English name is for the hoof-shaped leaf, which appears only after the flowers have gone, so that the old herbalists called it *filius ante patrem*, the son before the father.

## Sources

- Grieve, M. *A Modern Herbal*, “Coltsfoot.” As published on botanical.com.
- Pliny, *Natural History* XXVI.
- Grieve, M. (1931). *A Modern Herbal*, “Coltsfoot.”
- European Medicines Agency (2014). *Public statement on pyrrolizidine alkaloids*.

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*Coltsfoot.* In *Materia Medica*, edited by B. C. P. Statema. Version 1, revised 2026-10-01. The Thinking Press. https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/coltsfoot

Historical description, not medical advice.