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| | URBAN HERBS: Butterfly Weed |
 | | Butterfly weed or pleurisy root has a hairy stem, umbels of showy, orange flowers, and alternate, lance-shaped or narrow leaves, about two to five inches long. |
 | | Butterfly weed is known as pleurisy root because it was used for “mitigating the pain and for relieving the difficulty of the breathing” in pleurisy, asthma, and bronchitis (Foster and Duke 1990; Le Strange 1977). |
 | | Southern Indians used butterfly weed for dysentery, dropsy (an obsolete term for edema, or swelling), asthma, and as an emetic. |
| www.georgetown.edu /departments/physiology/cam/urbanherbs/butterfly_weed.htm (553 words) |
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