Bach’s 38 Flower Remedies: A Free Reference Chart

The Bach flower remedies are the 38 preparations the English physician Edward Bach made from wild flowers, trees and spring water between 1928 and 1936. This free chart lists all 38 in his order, with each plant’s Latin name, the method he used (sun or boiling), when it was found and the heading he gave it in 1936. It records history, not indications.

This page is the Global Spiritual Studies reference chart of the 38 Bach flower remedies. It is drawn from primary sources (Bach’s own text of The Twelve Healers and Other Remedies in the Bach Centre’s 1941 and 2009 editions, and the Bach Centre’s history pages), and where those sources disagree each view is shown and credited. Global Spiritual Studies teaches flower essences as a contemplative practice and makes no health claims.

What is in the chart

The chart is four printable pages, built to sit beside a book on Bach rather than to replace one. Every row is a fact you can check against Bach’s own text.

• Pages 1 to 3 · the 38. Every remedy in the order Bach gave in 1936, with the Latin name, the heading he placed it under (quoted as history), the method he used and the years in which it was found.
• Page 1 · the history in brief. The dates in one paragraph, from the first remedies to the finished system, and a note on how to read the chart.
• Page 3 · the 38 in numbers. The original twelve, the seven helpers and the other nineteen, with the sun and boiling counts for each.
• Page 4 · where the tradition went next. Six of the first makers after Bach, with founders and dates, and the sources for every column.

The 38 remedies in Bach’s order

In the final edition of his book Bach placed the 38 under seven headings, in this order: For Fear · For Uncertainty · For Insufficient Interest in Present Circumstances · For Loneliness · For Those Over-Sensitive to Influences and Ideas · For Despondency or Despair · For Over-care for Welfare of Others. The table gives every remedy in that order. The headings are quoted as history, in Bach’s words, and are not a description of any remedy.

Headings, order and methods are Bach’s own, from The Twelve Healers and Other Remedies (1936; Bach Centre 1941 edition). Latin names follow the Bach Centre’s 2009 edition, with spelling normalized; several have changed since 1936 (Centaury was Erythraea centaurium, Impatiens was Impatiens royleii). The “Found” column follows the Bach Centre editors: the original twelve by 1932, the seven helpers in the 1933 and July 1934 editions, the other nineteen by the autumn of 1935. This table records history only and gives no indication for any remedy.

The history in brief

Edward Bach (1886 to 1936) was an English physician, bacteriologist and homeopath. His first remedies date from 1928 to 1930, and the first three (Impatiens, Mimulus, Clematis) were homeopathic preparations. He found the sun method in 1930 and the boiling method in 1935, and the 38 were complete by 1936. The Bach Centre’s editors note that flower remedies as they are made today began with the sun method, later in 1930.

Bach set out the system in one small book that he rewrote as it grew. The Twelve Healers appeared as a pamphlet in the spring of 1933, The Twelve Healers and Four Helpers that autumn and The Twelve Healers and Seven Helpers, with nineteen remedies, in July 1934. Popular summaries often conflate the 1933 and 1934 editions. The final edition, The Twelve Healers and Other Remedies, came out on 24 September 1936, his fiftieth birthday, and in it he dropped the healers and helpers and placed all 38 under seven plain headings. According to the same editors, those seven groups were based on the seven Bach nosodes, the homeopathic preparations of his earlier laboratory work.

The two methods are easy to state in Bach’s own terms. For the sun method, freshly picked blooms are floated on the purest water to hand in a thin glass bowl and left in bright sunshine for three or four hours, then lifted out, and the water is preserved with brandy. For the boiling method, the plant material is boiled for half an hour in clean water, strained, cooled and preserved the same way. Bach’s booklet gives no reason why some plants were boiled and others sunned; the explanation usually given today is the Bach Centre’s later account. The full method, maker by maker, is in our guide to how to make a flower essence, and the life behind the chart is on Edward Bach and the Bach flower remedies.

The 38 by when they were found

Counts are taken from the 38-row table above. Of the twenty sun-method remedies, nineteen are flowers and one, Rock Water, is water from an unspoiled natural spring or well. The seven helpers are dated “1933 to 1934” as a group because the Bach Centre’s editors do not name them by year.

Two patterns follow from the dates. Every one of the original twelve is a sun-method remedy, which fits the order of events: the boiling method did not exist until 1935. And one tree gave two remedies by different methods: the White Chestnut blossom by sun, and its buds by boiling, as Chestnut Bud. Bach noted that all the plants grow wild in the British Isles except Vine, Olive and Cerato.

Why this chart has no “use for” column

Most Bach charts online add a column that says what each remedy is for. This one does not, and the reason is simple: Global Spiritual Studies does not match flowers to conditions. We teach flower essences as a spiritual and contemplative practice, and a column that pairs a remedy with a state of mind reads as a health claim, whatever its intention.

Bach’s seven headings appear because they are the structure of his book. They are part of the historical record, and the chart quotes them in his words under a column that says so. His own description of each remedy is one short paragraph, and it can be read in full in the Bach Centre’s edition of The Twelve Healers and Other Remedies, listed in the Sources below. Bach wrote about his remedies with complete confidence, and those claims are part of the history too. Systematic reviews of the clinical trials, by Thaler and colleagues in 2009 and by Edzard Ernst in 2002 and 2010, found no evidence of effects beyond placebo.

Where the tradition went next

Bach declared his system complete at 38, and the Bach Centre has kept it that way: it works only with the original 38. Most later makers took his methods and went looking for new flowers. Spirit-in-Nature Essences, which Lila Devi began in California, and Living Essences of Australia, which Vasudeva Barnao began researching in Western Australia, both date their start to 1977. Richard Katz founded the Flower Essence Society in California in 1979, Steve Johnson began the Alaskan Flower Essence Project in January 1984, and Ian White started Australian Bush Flower Essences in 1986 by the company’s account, or 1987 by an interview account. In 1988 Julian Barnard founded Healing Herbs in Herefordshire to make all 38 by Bach’s own methods. Chicory, one of the original twelve, has a page of its own: Chicory flower essence. The main lines are set out in the directory of flower essence makers, and the whole sequence is in the history of flower essences.

Online course · Gina Kearney, RH (AHG) Flower Essence Shamanism · Meeting the Four Elemental Flowers Six recorded lessons. An introduction to flower essences, then one guided meditation and drum journey for each of four flowers: Nicotiana for Earth, Trumpet Vine for Air, Cayenne for Fire and Fuchsia for Water. No bottle is needed. Explore the practice → What's included

• Six recorded lessonsover 2½ hours of teaching and practice
• Four guided journeysa meditation and drum journey for each flower
• PDF handouts and flower cardssix lesson handouts, four printable cards
• Two live sessions with Ginaa live Q&A and a fifth-flower practice, both recorded
• Final quiz and certificatea certificate of completion in your name
• Captions on every lessonEnglish now, translations coming soon

Frequently asked questions

Thirty-eight wild flowers, set down in the order a doctor gave them.