Low PA Comfrey
Answered by: Conrad Richter
Question from: Rusty Taylor
Posted on: January 20, 2002

I’ve ordered herbs seeds and plants from your catalog before and I really appreciate your wide variety and good service. I have a question - Have you ever seen or heard of a comfrey variety called Symphytum tuberosum L.? It is called tuberous comfrey and comes from SE Europe. I read an article by a German scientist about plants with PAs in them, including the comfrey family. (URL where you can find the article: http://ibiblio.org/herbmed/PAs/PAs-plants.html#asteraceae) His recommendation was to use tuberous comfrey because of its low concentration of PAs and also because it is very high in allantoin. I would like to get ahold of some of this comfrey, and figured you’d be interested in this also. If you can find it, I would really like to buy some.

We are aware of Symphytum tuberosum and this feature of low pyrollizidine alkaloid (PA), high allantoin content. This species could be an important alternative to the high PA species that are commonly grown.

The plant is on our "wish list" and we are looking for stock material. When we find a reliable source we will offer it in a future catalogue. At this time we cannot say when that might be, so we suggest that you check back when the new catalogue comes out in January.

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