SprigCan anyone help Avashnee and her son out? mol-d
Hello,
I came across your website, and was wondering about Wild Dagga (Leonotis Leonurus). I have a son who is suffering from very bad Eczema and many people told me to get him to bathe in this?
Please could you let me know.
Thanks,
Avashnee Manickum
A while back Sonya asked my advice on pruning her Wild Dagga. “Hack it down close to the base,” I told her and I have now taken a couple of pics to illustrate what I meant.
I must stress that this isn’t professional advice and there may be a better way of pruning but it works for me. Every year the Wild Dagga grows back fuller and bushier.
I recently visited my friend’s mom who has an almost entirely indigenous garden, transformed in just three years and last year named ‘Runner Up – Best Indigenous Garden’ in the Pam Golding Properties/Home Loans from Absa Gardens of Pride competition.
Creating an indigenous garden can be a daunting task. I have taken a load of photos of this garden and will post them for identification and discussion. Hopefully, this will give us a better idea of the plants we might like to introduce into our own gardens.
First up, a take on wild dagga… Has anyone seen this cream variation before? It was the first time I have come across it.
This is a follow-on from Sonya’s earlier post, showing my wild dagga flowering profusely. I also started with a small twig of a plant which has now grown into this great bush.
A rather beautiful name for a somewhat sparse green bush that Roger has accused of being a ‘weed’. However, in the last few days Leonotis (as we’ll call her) has been pushing out furry orange spider legs from her green foliage and making quite a show of herself. Some call her lion’s tail, another site said Leonurus means ‘lion’s ears’, others label her ‘wild dagga’. I found a site in the US expousing her legal status and recommending that you “don’t operate heavy machinery under the influence” – one of the more sensible ones hinted that she is rather a poor substitute for tobacco and has been smoked as such for aeons (possibly even by the bush men, yet another site boasts). So what a checkered past our Leonotis has, when all she wants is the peace to be in nature and do what she does best… shine!
