WESTERN STONESEED

Lithospermum ruderale
family: Borage (Boraginaceae)
vóhpó'ėstse, "white-grey plants"
 
Western stoneseed is perennial plant. Many unbranched stems, 25 to 60 cm tall, grow from a big woody taproot. The stem and leaves are roughly to finely hairy. Leaves are sessile, lanceolate to linear, 3 to 10 cm long, 2 to 10 mm wide. Flowers are yellowish, about 8 mm wide, in fascicles rounded with the leaves. Western stoneseed blossoms from April to June. It grows in open, dry places, on slopes or in meadows; from foothills to middle mountain level. It ranges from British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, and northern California, to Saskatchewan, central Montana, the Bighorn Mountains area, the Front Range and San Juan Mountains in Colorado.
Cheyennes used western stoneseed to relieve rheumatic pains mostly. They dried the leaves and stems, and ground them to a fine powder. The powder was wetted and applied externally. They considered as more effective if the plant could effect on the sore part in the long term. However, usually it wasn’t possible and the poultices were applied repeatedly. According to the Cheyenne people, this species of stoneseed relieved hidden pains of any cause, when the skin over the sore spot wasn’t broken (Grinnell 1923 II: 185).
 
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