Photo: A. Barra, CC BY 3.0 (via Wikimedia Commons)
Bowman's Root
Gillenia trifoliata
Also known as Indian Physic, American Ipecac, False Ipecac, Fawn's Breath
Key benefits
✦Traditional uses
✦Long before it wore the tidy name Bowman's Root, this plant was known to Cherokee, Iroquois, and other Native peoples as a root that could empty a troubled stomach. Early American settlers learned of it from Indigenous healers and adopted it eagerly, calling it Indian Physic and later American Ipecac, because they used it much as the South American ipecac root was used, to induce vomiting and cleanse the system during fevers and bilious complaints. Nineteenth century Eclectic physicians kept it in their materia medica for the same purpose, valuing it as a homegrown alternative when imported ipecac was scarce. That use has almost entirely fallen away, and today the plant is prized instead for its wild, wand-like beauty in the shade garden.
How to grow & use it
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- ✦Solomon's seal
- ✦Wild ginger
- ✦Foamflower
- ✦Astilbe (for a similar airy woodland silhouette)
- ✦Foamflower (for shade garden texture)
“For the shaded corner that longs for a little wildness, a flurry of starry blooms dancing above the ferns.”
Bowman's Root earned the nickname American Ipecac because nineteenth century doctors used its root as a homegrown stand-in for true ipecac, a South American plant that was expensive and hard to import reliably.
Bowman's root was traditionally used as a strong emetic and purgative, and ingesting it can cause significant vomiting, diarrhea, and dehydration. It isn't suited for home preparation, self-dosing, children, or use during pregnancy or nursing.