Coltsfoot Rock

Remember when I wrote about coltsfoot a few days ago? It's the plant that looks like a short dandelion, sort of.  Wikipedia says that the coltsfoot leaves were dried, then smoked, as a treatment for athsma. They also said that in England the extract is made into a candy-like confection that is a cough suppresant called Coltsfoot Rock.

Well, thanks to Google, I found the company, Stockley's, that makes it in Oswaldtwistle, United Kingdom, which is near Lancashire, and I sent for some. They evidently sent it Express because it arrived only a few days after I placed the order. I'm posting a picture of its packaging.

Of course, we had to taste it! The listed ingredients are sugar, liquorice, gelatin, paragoric, capsicum, Oil of Aniseed, Coltsfoot (Extract) .0012%, no artificial coloring. (Capsicum is "a tropical American pepper plant.") The box contained four 6-inch sticks that looked like 6-inch cigar-colored pieces of chalk. It tasted pretty good, but we are saving it for an athsma attack. 

There is a drawing on the back of the box of three coltsfoot flowers in front of a hoof-shaped leaf for illustrative purposes only since the flowers and leaves do not appear at the same time.

It was fun sending for something from "the old country."