About this product

Elephant's Head (Pedicularis groenlandica) is a very interesting plant. Somewhat elusive, it grows in middle elevation in summer meadows in the Cascade Mountain Range of Oregon and Washington. This plant has gained the interest of herbal healers and connoisseurs around the world, not just because of its flowers' uncanny likeness to the head of an elephant, but also due to its potent and specific effects as a healing herb. Elephant's Head is hemi-parasitic on other plants in these highly specific environments, so it's almost impossible to bring into cultivation on any meaningful commercial scale. In effect, this adds another level to the mystique of the herb, since it often takes a trained wildcrafter to find stands large enough to harvest without causing any appreciable damage to these ecosystems year after year. For these reasons - medicinal value, relative scarcity, and resistance to cultivation - Elephant's Head is a concern for many wildcrafters, herbalists, botanists, and ecologists, as being in a possibly precarious position in the future (climate change is also a factor).