Female Vitality Supplements

Rooted in both Ayurvedic and Western herbal practice, Female Vitality brings together botanicals with long traditions of use in women’s herbal care. Asparagus racemosus (Shatavari): A climbing asparagus relative of the Indian subcontinent and the principal women’s tonic of Ayurveda. It is classed as a rasayana, a rejuvenative tonic taken over a course of months, traditionally in warm milk or ghee, and has been used across the whole span of a woman’s life rather than at a single stage of it. Rosa damascena (Rose Petal): A cooling plant in both Unani and Ayurvedic practice, traditionally associated with the heart. It takes several thousand hand-picked petals to yield a single millilitre of rose oil, which gives some sense of what the material is worth. Calendula officinalis (Calendula): The pot marigold, a fixture of monastery gardens across medieval Europe and one of the most widely used flowers in Western herbal practice. Its golden petals turn any oil they sit in a deep gold, that colour is the plant itself rather than any additive. Glycyrrhiza glabra (Liquorice Root): One of the great harmonising herbs, included across Chinese, Ayurvedic and European formulas to bring the other botanicals together. Filipendula ulmaria (Meadowsweet): A damp-meadow plant of the British countryside that smells faintly of almond and hay. It holds a genuine place in the history of chemistry: salicin was first isolated from meadowsweet, and the word aspirin derives from Spiraea, its old botanical name.