Selfhele

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A low-growing wild plant with violet flowers that was once prized in herbal medicine for healing wounds
2. An old name for a small herb with purple flower spikes, long used in folk remedies for cuts and sores
3. A creeping meadow plant, Prunella vulgaris, traditionally brewed or applied to treat injuries and inflammation

Etymology: Self-heal is a low, creeping plant with small violet flowers, known to botanists as Prunella vulgaris, and it was long valued as a remedy for wounds. Its English name combines "self" with "hele," an older form of "heal," so the name is generally understood to mean that the plant heals on its own, without a healer. "Hele" comes from the Old English "hǣlan," meaning to make whole or sound, and it is related to "whole" and "health." "Self" here carries its older sense of "own" or "itself," so the compound reads roughly as "the plant that heals itself."