RIBWORT PLANTAIN

Before you call it a weed, consider its many talents

I KNEW OF A HIDDEN POND that I figured would be full of fish, so one day I loaded up my car with fishing gear and set out. There was no path to this pond, and you couldn't see it from the road. You had to know it was there to know it was there. Getting to it involved brushing my way through tall stands of rushes and cattails.

Soon enough I was flinging a colorful plug out into the deep part of the pond, hoping to hook a largemouthed bass, when a sharp pain hit the little finger on my left hand. A bee had found my pinkie and as I squeezed the fishing rod's handle, it stung me.

Almost immediately I felt a hot streak zinging up my left arm. It began to itch and red welts appeared on my skin. In another couple of minutes, I abandoned the pond, flung my tackle into the back seat and began a tortuous 40-mile drive home. My body was covered with itching skin and red welts, and I was in torment the whole way. Once home, I ran into the house and bleated my misery to my wife.

She told me to "take your clothes off and lay down," then walked out of the house. A few minutes later she came back with a basket of green leaves that she pounded into a wet paste and rubbed all over my body. Almost instantaneously, the itching stopped, the red welts disappeared and I felt fine-except on the heels of my feet, where she hadn't applied the poultice.

"What did you do-what was that?" I asked.

"Plantago lanceolata-the ribwort plantain," she said.