Herbal constituents can sound like one of the driest parts of herbalism. Long lists of unfamiliar chemical names are often tucked into the bottom of an herbal monograph, disconnected from the living plant and with very little explanation of what they actually mean.
But what if constituents are not simply chemicals to memorize? What if they are one of the ways plants communicate with us?
In my second conversation with herbalist and phytochemist Lisa Ganora, we explored herbal constituents as the physical embodiment of plant communication. They help create the flavor of an herb, the color of its flowers, the sensation it leaves in the mouth, the way it extracts into water or alcohol, and ultimately, the ways our bodies respond to it.
This way of understanding phytochemistry does not take the mystery or spirit out of herbalism. It brings us closer to the plant.
This blog post is based on our podcast conversation. For those who would like to listen to gain all of Lisa's wisdom directly, you can do so here!
What Are Herbal Constituents?
Herbal constituents are the naturally occurring compounds made by plants. They include broad groups such as polysaccharides, polyphenols, lipids, amino acid derivatives, alkaloids and terpenoids, along with thousands of smaller subgroups.
These compounds help plants survive, communicate, protect themselves, attract pollinators and respond to their environments. When we drink an herbal tea, take a tincture, eat a medicinal plant or apply an infused oil to the skin, our bodies encounter those compounds and respond to the information they carry.
Lisa describes constituents as signals: patterns of energy expressed in physical form. An herb’s chemistry is not separate from its energetics, actions or spirit. It is one of the ways those qualities become tangible.
This also helps explain why an herb cannot be reduced to one active ingredient. A single constituent is more like one violin within an entire orchestra. It contributes something meaningful, but it is not the whole song.
Learning About Plants Through the Senses
Long before herbalists could identify constituents in a laboratory, people learned about plants by tasting, smelling, touching and observing them.
This sensory practice is sometimes called organoleptics. It allows us to notice the immediate ways an herb communicates with the body.
We can feel the slippery texture of marshmallow root and understand why it soothes dry, irritated tissues. We can taste the drying quality of an astringent herb. We can smell aromatic oils rising from lavender or mint. We can feel the unmistakable buzz of echinacea or spilanthes moving across the tongue.
Our minds may not immediately know the chemical explanation for these sensations, but our bodies recognize them.
The more familiar we become with the tastes, textures and sensations associated with different constituents, the more we can begin to understand an unfamiliar plant. We are not replacing botanical identification, safety knowledge or traditional information. We are adding another layer of relationship.
Alkylamides: The Buzz of Echinacea
Anyone who has tasted a strong echinacea root tincture knows that it is not subtle.
The tongue begins to tingle. The mouth waters. There may be a buzzing or almost numbing sensation that seems to wake up the entire oral cavity.
This sensation comes largely from a group of constituents called alkylamides, which are also found in herbs such as spilanthes and prickly ash. These plants have traditionally been used for concerns involving the mouth, throat, inflammation and immune response.
Energetically, alkylamide-rich herbs are often described as diffusive. Their effect is immediate and attention-getting. The body notices that something has arrived.
Lisa shared a story about encountering brittlebush in the Sonoran Desert. After safely identifying the plant, she tasted one of its flowers and experienced the same characteristic buzz she knew from echinacea and spilanthes. When she later looked into its traditional uses, she found that brittlebush had also been used for toothaches and sore throats.
The sensory experience helped reveal something about the plant that had received very little attention in modern phytochemical research.
This is where traditional knowledge, personal experience and science can meet. Scientific research can help explain what we are observing, but people have been gathering meaningful information from plants through their senses for a very long time.
Echinacea Is More Than an “Immune Herb”
Echinacea is usually introduced as an immune stimulant, but that description only captures one small part of the plant.
Historically, the Eclectic physicians described echinacea as an alterative: an herb used to create gradual, meaningful change in chronic patterns. They also used it as a lymphatic herb and for hot, inflamed or toxic conditions.
Modern herbalism often talks about echinacea through the language of the immune system, while older herbalists described what they could directly observe. They saw swollen lymph nodes, infected wounds and inflammatory processes respond to the plant, even before the immune system was fully understood as a distinct physiological system.
Today, we can look at echinacea from several perspectives. It may be described as immune-supportive, lymphatic, anti-inflammatory, diffusive or alterative. None of these descriptions is necessarily wrong. They are simply different windows into a much more complex plant.
Why the Extraction Method Matters
Understanding constituents becomes especially useful when making herbal medicine because different compounds have different relationships with water, alcohol and oil.
Echinacea offers a perfect example.
Its buzzy alkylamides extract well into alcohol, particularly within a moderate alcohol concentration. Its immunomodulating polysaccharides, however, are much more interested in hot water.
These polysaccharides are large carbohydrate compounds found in the structures of plants and mushrooms. Some of them interact directly with immune tissue in the mouth, throat and digestive tract. They tend to taste mild, starchy or almost food-like rather than sharp and stimulating.
A simple echinacea tincture will emphasize certain aspects of the plant. A strong tea or decoction will emphasize others. Combining an echinacea water preparation with its tincture creates a broader medicine. This is what we do to create our Ultra Echinacea tincture at Dancing Willow Herbs.
The alcohol extraction captures more of the alkylamides, while the hot-water process draws out the polysaccharides. When the two are combined, the finished extract reflects more of the whole plant.
You can find Ultra Echinacea here!
There is no single perfect extraction for every herb. The best preparation depends on which part of the plant we are using, which constituents we want to preserve and how we hope to use the medicine.
The Immune and Lymphatic Systems Are Deeply Interwoven
Echinacea also shows us why the herbal categories “immune herb” and “lymphatic herb” often overlap.
The immune system is not located in one neat organ. Immune activity takes place throughout the body, with much of it occurring in lymphatic tissue.
When the lymph nodes become swollen during an infection, they are not simply congested with fluid. Immune cells inside them are multiplying and preparing to respond. Older herbalists may not have known the cellular details, but they knew that certain plants helped resolve swollen and painful lymph nodes.
This is part of why echinacea was traditionally understood as a lymphatic alterative. Its relationship with the lymphatic system cannot be separated from its relationship with immune activity and inflammation.
Red root is another classic lymphatic herb, although its chemistry has received far less modern investigation. Much of what we know about it comes from traditional herbal practice, the Eclectic physicians and later herbalists such as Michael Moore.
The absence of extensive research does not mean the absence of knowledge. It means we need to remain honest about where our information comes from.
You can find Echinacea & Red Root in our Lymph Tonic.
Traditional Herbal Knowledge Holds What Science Has Not Yet Studied
One of my favorite stories from the conversation involved stinging nettles.
Lisa had recently spoken with a woman raised in Russia whose grandmother practiced herbal medicine during World War II. She remembered fresh nettles being crushed and applied as poultices to soldiers’ wounds, which were said to heal more effectively with this traditional treatment.
This was not a use Lisa had encountered in Western materia medica. Yet within that family and community, it was ordinary knowledge.
Nettles are also traditionally used through urtication, the intentional application of fresh nettle stings to painful muscles or joints. The temporary superficial irritation stimulates circulation and is followed by a deeper shift in the inflammatory response.
Scientific investigation is valuable. So are Indigenous traditions, family knowledge, historical medical texts, clinical experience, medicine making and direct sensory relationship. The richest understanding comes when we allow these forms of knowledge to speak to one another without pretending they are interchangeable.
Carotenoids: The Medicine Inside Yellow, Orange and Red
While alkylamides announce themselves through sensation, carotenoids often communicate through color.
Carotenoids are the pigments that create many of the yellow, orange and red colors found in plants and foods. We see them in carrots, squash, peppers, calendula petals, dandelion flowers and the changing leaves of autumn.
They are also hidden beneath the chlorophyll in every green leaf.
Carotenoids are broadly protective compounds with antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activity. They are especially valuable for tissues that are constantly growing and renewing, including the skin and mucous membranes.
This helps us better understand why deeply colored foods and herbs are so important. Their colors are not merely decorative. They tell us something about the medicine held inside.
Dark leafy greens such as nettles, kale and collards contain carotenoids even though the orange and yellow pigments are concealed beneath the dominant green chlorophyll. These compounds can also move through the food chain, contributing to the golden color of spring butter, richly colored milk and deep orange egg yolks when animals are eating fresh plants.
The color itself becomes a signal.
Calendula: Different Medicine Within One Flower
Calendula is a beautiful plant through which to study how constituents may be distributed within different parts of an herb.
The golden petals are rich in carotenoids. They are mild in flavor and were traditionally used to deepen the color of butter and cheese because these pigments have an affinity for fat.
The center of the calendula flower is much more bitter, sticky and resinous. This is where more of its bitter principles and resinous terpenoid compounds are concentrated.
You can experience this yourself by carefully tasting a calendula petal separately from the central disc. They hardly seem like the same plant part. The petal is mild and pleasant, while the center announces a much stronger medicine.
Calendula flowers also contain immunomodulating polysaccharides. Together, these different groups of constituents help us understand why calendula has such a strong affinity for irritated skin, the digestive lining and other mucous membranes.
The plant is not working through one isolated chemical. Its soothing, protective and inflammatory-modulating qualities arise from the relationship among many compounds.
This is also an important reminder that individual sensitivity matters. A plant may be broadly soothing and still be inappropriate for a particular person. Our bodies are part of the conversation, and repeated discomfort or allergic symptoms should not be ignored.
Dandelions and the Medicine We Have Been Taught to Overlook
Dandelion flowers are another abundant source of carotenoids, along with polyphenols, flavonoids and small amounts of bitter constituents.
They are also everywhere.
We have built an entire industry around removing dandelions from lawns while spending enormous amounts of money on brightly packaged supplements. Meanwhile, one of our most accessible medicinal foods is growing through the cracks in the sidewalk.
Dandelion flowers are milder than the leaves and can be added to food when harvested from a clean, unsprayed area. The greens become more bitter as the season progresses, while the roots offer their own distinctive medicine.
For Lisa, dandelion root was the herb that first opened the door to herbal medicine. Until then, she had understood dandelion only as a weed. Experiencing its effects changed the way she saw the plant, and eventually the entire living world around her.
Part of the work of herbalism is helping repair this cultural disconnection. Common plants can be powerful plants. Familiarity does not make them ordinary.
Phytochemistry Can Deepen Our Relationship With Plants
It is possible to study herbal constituents in a way that becomes abstract and disconnected. We can isolate compounds, memorize terminology and forget that the molecules came from a living being.
But phytochemistry can also move us in the opposite direction.
Understanding why echinacea tingles, why marshmallow becomes slippery, why calendula oil turns golden and why dandelions glow yellow can deepen our respect for the plants. It can make us better medicine makers while also making the living world feel more intelligent, complex and worthy of attention.
The goal is not to turn every relationship with an herb into a chemistry lesson. It is to let the science bring us closer.
Taste the tea. Notice what happens in your mouth. Pay attention to the color that moves into an infused oil. Feel whether an herb moistens, dries, warms, cools, tightens or diffuses. Learn the constituents, but keep returning them to the context of the whole plant.
Even when our minds do not yet have language for what is happening, our bodies are listening.
A Relationship Requires Reciprocity
Knowledge is not the only thing we gather from plants. We gather food, medicine, beauty, inspiration and livelihood.
A true relationship cannot move in only one direction.
During our conversation, Lisa described watering wild plants through the dry Colorado summer. She brings water to dandelions and other herbs when the land is stressed, not because they belong to her, but because caring for them is part of the relationship.
Reciprocity does not need to be grand. It may look like harvesting respectfully, tending a patch, sharing seeds, removing trash, offering water during drought or supporting the ecosystems in which medicinal plants live.
The more we understand the complexity of plants, the harder it becomes to see them as passive ingredients.
They are our medicines, but they are also our elders and teachers. Learning their chemistry is one more way of learning how to listen.
Listen to the Full Conversation
This article was inspired by my conversation with Lisa Ganora on The Dancing Willow Podcast. In the full episode, The Language of Plants: Herbal Constituents with Lisa Ganora, we explore alkylamides, polysaccharides, carotenoids, lymphatic herbs, sensory herbalism, medicine making and the meeting place between traditional knowledge and modern phytochemistry.
Lisa teaches functional phytochemistry and offers courses for herbalists who want to understand constituents within the context of living plants, clinical herbalism and herbal medicine making. Find her work here: herbalconstituents.com