A plant-fungus collaboration that also stops cuts from bleeding…

A common plant of sunny grassy areas, plantain forms a good-neighborly symbiotic partnership with a microscopic fungus living inside its leaves. The fungus is fed sugars and in return provides micronutrients, helps with water retention, and also helps the plant produce chemicals which make the leaves unpalatable to insects.

Those same compounds provide health benefits to humans, including catalpol, which protects nerves and may help treat neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's. The leaves contain Vitamin K, which supports blood clotting and helps stop bleeding – it’s a wild first-aid plant!

An alternative name for plantain is ‘waybread’, and sure enough, the seeds make a tasty wayside snack! They also make a good addition to salads or bread, with added health benefits: they help reduce cholesterol, aid digestive health, and prevent sugar spikes after eating. The same is true, but more so, of their husks, sold in health food shops as ‘psyllium’.