Native Plants

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Friday - June 20, 2008

From: Paris, TN
Region: Southeast
Topic: Edible Plants
Title: Tea made from timothy grass
Answered by: Nan Hampton

QUESTION:

My mom and I have been drinking tea made from Timothy grass seed for many years, 40 at least. It is delicious, and refreshing. My question is can you see any harm in drinking tea made from the seeds of untreated timothy seeds? Is the chemical composition once heated unsafe? We have never suffered any ill affects in all these years and was just curious about it. Thank You, Ruthie Lee

ANSWER:

Phleum pratense (timothy grass), a non-native introduced grass from Europe, is one of the worst of the allergenic grass pollens, second only to Dactylis glomerata (orchard grass), another non-native invasive; but other than causing hayfever and being considered as one of the Invasive and Noxious Weeds of the Northeast I couldn't really find anything else bad or toxic about it. According to the Ohio Perennial & Biennial Weed Guide : "Toxicity: None known. Pollen can cause dermatitis and hayfever." None of our other favorite poisonous plants databases (e.g., Poisonous Plants of North Carolina, Cornell University Poisonous Plants Informational Database, Texas Toxic Plants, Canadian Poisonous Plants Information System) lists it.

Treatment for allergies is often based on applying controlled doses of the allergen to accustom the immune system to it and prohibit the allergic reaction. Both injection immunotherapy (in which extracts of the timothy grass allergens are injected subcutaneously) and sublinqual immunotherapy (in which a pill containing extracts of the timothy grass allergens are allowed to dissolve under the tongue) have been used to treat hayfever caused by timothy grass.