Chamomile

A natural history

Chamomile is one of the most ancient medicinal herbs known, a low, daisy like plant of Europe and western Asia whose flower heads smell faintly of apples. The Greeks named it for that scent, khamaimelon, the ground apple, and it was prized in ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome. People steeped the flowers in baths, laid them over sore eyes, and brewed them into the calming tea that has comforted people for centuries.

That gentle reputation runs deep in culture. When Beatrix Potter put Peter Rabbit to bed after his fright in Mr. McGregor's garden, his mother dosed him with chamomile tea, the universal shorthand for comfort. Across European folk practice the flowers were used to soothe irritated skin and to brighten fair hair, and gardeners came to call it the plant physician for the way it seemed to revive whatever grew beside it.

What it does for your skin

Chamomile flowers are rich in soothing compounds such as bisabolol and apigenin. In a half side comparison in people with mild eczema, a chamomile cream used over two weeks was reported to slightly outperform a low dose hydrocortisone cream for the look of irritated skin.^[1] In laboratory work on human immune cells, chamomile extract and its compound apigenin calmed markers of activation, offering a mechanism behind its long soothing reputation.^[2] In a formula it reads as a classic calming botanical that helps reddened, reactive skin look settled.

References