Educational information, not medical advice — ask your doctor or midwife.
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Ptelea trifoliata is a homeopathic remedy. It is a single drug (Homeopathy), and the Latin name is Ptelea trifoliata. Most people call it wafer ash or hop tree.
It is made from the bark and root bark of a small North American tree. Homeopaths have used it for stomach and liver complaints. The old texts point to a dull ache under the right ribs, a bitter taste in the mouth, and wheezing at night.
The remedy is serially diluted. At 30C the plant was mixed one part into 100 parts, thirty times over, so almost no plant matter is left. Trials do not show that it works better than a dummy pill (placebo).
Long use in a tradition is not proof that a remedy works. We report the traditional record and the trial record as two separate things.
The plain answer: no one has shown how it could work. There is no known way for a 30C dilution to act on the body, because there is almost nothing left in it.
Homeopathy rests on two ideas. The first is "like cures like", which means a substance that causes a symptom is used, in tiny amounts, to treat that symptom. The second is that shaking and diluting make a remedy stronger, not weaker.
Neither idea matches what we know about chemistry or the body. The claim that water holds a "memory" of the plant has no support from lab work.
Low dilutions and the mother tincture are different. They still hold plant matter, so they can act on the body and can cause side effects.
Common forms you will see:
Sugar pellets, pills or tablets, sold as 6C, 12C or 30C. Liquid drops in alcohol, at the same strengths. Mother tincture, marked "MT" or "1X", which is a plain plant extract and is not a high dilution.
The pellets and high-dilution drops hold almost no plant matter. The mother tincture holds a lot. Read the label, because the two are not the same thing.
Native peoples in eastern North America used wafer ash bark as a bitter tonic for poor digestion. Settler herbalists picked it up and used it the same way.
Homeopaths added it to their materia medica in the 1800s. It appears in the old texts of Clarke and Boericke, mostly for right-sided liver pain and for asthma that gets worse lying down.
It has always been a minor remedy. It was never a first-choice medicine in any tradition.
See a doctor now if your skin or eyes turn yellow, your urine goes dark, or the pain under your right ribs is bad or will not stop. Get help the same day for a fever with belly pain, for vomiting that will not stop, or for blood in your vomit or stools.
Call emergency services if you cannot breathe, cannot speak in full sentences, or your lips look blue.
Book a normal appointment if your stomach or bowel symptoms last more than two weeks, or if you keep needing a remedy week after week.
Evidence grades and traditional-use labels are explained in our methodology. Nothing here is medical advice.
Reviewed by the HealisticMD editorial team How we grade evidence →
The published evidence for Ptelea trifoliata is weak or absent. That usually means no controlled trial has tested it, not that a trial found it ineffective — the two are different, and we grade only what has been published.
What it is typically used for, usual dose, cautions, and the study behind it where real trial data exists.
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