The forgotten chicken was roasting at 475° F. Rushing into the kitchen to save dinner, I quickly pulled the oven door open, reached in with a hot pad in hand to grab the pan and the oven door bounced trying to close with my arm in the way. Needless to say, I was stunned for a moment until the pain hit.

Immediately, I turned on the faucet to cold and ran water over my arm for a while, then grabbed some ice. After the first few minutes, I know the burn was at least going to blister if not be more serious. Thoughts of Granny Cloud and a dear old college professor, Dr. Thomas J. Sheehan came to mind.

Granny Cloud always kept a patch of Aloe vera growing near the house for treating occasional burns, she also took the gel inside the leaves internally, but that's another story.

Dr. Sheehan was my undergraduate advisor and is an orchidist extraordinaire. During a lab session, I was firing the top of a glass test tube in an alcohol burner in preparation for sowing fine dust-like orchid seeds, Dr. Sheehan came into the lab and spoke to me for a short time. All during this time I was holding the tube in the flame, when he finished, I reached over and took the top of the tube in my bare fingers. Glass gets very hot and the burn was immediate. Dr. Sheehan took me by the wrist, removed the tube from my hand and lead me right out into the attached greenhouse. He split a fresh Aloe vera leaf and applied it directly to my thumb. The pain was a little intense, but seemed to be cooling. He gave me a couple of fresh leaves, told me to apply a fresh leaf section every hour and suggested I head to the student health center in the morning if my thumb was red or the pain was still extreme. The next morning, there was not even a blister.

Check out the L2G Aloe vera plant profile for more information and images of this amazing plant at www.learn2grow.com/plants/aloe-vera/

Well, much to my chagrin (I hear Granny Cloud fussing at me); I have no Aloe vera growing nearby. Surely there was something I could put on this burn which would easy the pain and help the healing process. There are many plants which have historically been used for treating burns. These include boiled elm bark, plantain leaves, alder bark, sweet gum leaves, goldseal roots, chickweed, ivy, mallow and St. John's wort. None of these are growing in my space and there has been little research and no confirmed results as to the effectiveness of any of them.

If you had been standing nearby, I bet you could have seen the light bulb turn on over my head, Bulbine frutescens grows in my landscape. Bulbine is a tender evergreen perennial in the lily family from South Africa and I had recently done some research about it. The leaves of this plant are round and tubular, thick and juicy. One common name for Bulbine is burn jelly plant and it has traditionally been used in Africa to treat a multitude of problems including mosquito bites, cuts, burns, rashes and eczema. Some reports that the sticky gel sap contains similar components as that of Aloe vera. Again, there are no conclusions as to the effectiveness of this plant sap as a medicinal treatment.

I cut a handful of Bulbine leaves, they are not as juicy as Aloe, scraped some of the sap and applied it to my arm. It was not as cooling as Aloe but the weather was very hot and the pain began to recede. As you can see above, part of the wound did blister. I continued to apply the Bulbine sap a couple of times a day for about a week. The wound has healed, it pealed like a sunburn and there is no scar.

Check out the L2G plant profile about Bulbine frutescens at www.learn2grow.com/plants/bulbine-frutes...

I can not and do not make a medical recommendation about any plant. But it may be worth a conversation with your doctor or other health professional about keeping a plant or two around for such. Aloe vera and Bulbine frutescens are good choices for herb and succulent garden and containers where not hardy.

The chicken was delicious.