Meet Pliny. Do you have a Pliny in your life? You should have one. Pliny is an aloe plant, which I picked up about a month ago for $4. Pliny had been neglected in the back room of a nearby florist, and he was a sad, shriveled little specimen. I took Pliny home, and nurtured him with a little water and sunlight, and now he’s back on the road to health.
You should get a Pliny, and you should keep it on a sunny windowsill in your kitchen. And then when you burn yourself pulling a pan out of the oven, you can do more than just curse loudly and hope that the children don’t notice. You can snip off an inch of one of Pliny’s spiny leaves, and drop some of the clear aloe gel onto your burn and feel better (some recommend running cool water over the burn first). But it’s got other uses, too; when you get a runny nose and break out in one of those nasty cold sores, rubbing some aloe gel on will help. Got other skin conditions, like psoriasis? Yeah, it’ll help there, too.
Apparently it’s been used by Everybody Who’s Anybody throughout history —from the Ancient Egyptians to Marco Polo to Roman gladiators to King Solomon to Aristotle to Christopher Columbus. Christ himself was embalmed with the help of aloe. Seriously, it shows up in a veritable Who’s Who of Folks That Matter (indeed, I chose the name Pliny after reading that Pliny the Elder created the world’s first anti-perspirant from aloe. All of us should be grateful for that. Besides, it didn’t seem right to name a plant Jesus).
But here’s the thing: nobody owns a patent on the aloe vera plant itself, so there’s not a whole lot of incentive to do controlled, peer-reviewed, double-blinded studies on the plant. As a result, when you start really looking for scientific evidence, you’ll find that there aren’t many scientific studies either way, and many of them are small or otherwise problematic. Though I suspect that if someone did own the patent on the plant, that would be remedied very quickly; as is, plenty of people are patenting everything aloe that they can — transgenic aloe plants, ointments from the plant, methods of purifying extracts from the plant, and many more. But the raw gel from the plant itself? Not much incentive there.
Here’s what I can tell you: I’ve used it with burns, and it makes me feel better. Also: every time I get a cold, I break out in a very pretty cold sore on my right nostril (lovely right?). The aloe gel is not only soothing, it also heals the sore faster than anything else I’ve tried, including prescription ointments.
Plus, I kill plants easily, and this one somehow is managing to thrive in my care. All it needs is sun, and water, and good drainage. You want to make sure the soil is totally dry before watering again, which is great for folks like me who can forget to water plants for endless amounts of time. When I want another, I will simply take one of the leaves off of Pliny, and drop it in another pot filled with succulent mix. And then I will have a Pliny the Elder, and a Pliny the Younger.
And that, friends, is why Pliney is one of my favorite kitchen things.
I can’t manage plants. I could have used one though when Luisa burned the top of her shoulder making mashed potatoes for Thanksgiving. Yes…ponder that…the TOP of her shoulder.
You do inspire, Ali. Aloe for skin conditions? Vanity always wins in my household so I might have to pick up a little plant of my own.
My fiance got me an Aloe Vera plant for Valentine’s Day. We named ours Spike and he is very handy. We use it for cuts, scrapes, and burns and he is very soothing. He was a bit orange when J. bought him because he had gotten too much sun but now that he is out of direct Colorado sunlight he is nice and green.