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What Is Arnica?

Inspired by tradition and its 85 years of expertise, Boiron has developed the Arnicare line, made partly from Arnica montana, a plant from the daisy family from mountainous regions, known for centuries for its therapeutic properties.

The Arnicare® line from Boiron is manufactured from homeopathic mother tincture, which is produced from fresh plants, including Arnica montana. It is harvested responsibly by hand by botany specialists and qualified harvesters.

This manufacturing method using fresh, whole, and fully-flowered plants allows to conserve the majority of components and active ingredients of Arnica montana.

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Want to learn more about Arnica montana?

Arnica Harvest

Arnica Harvest

Each year, Mother Nature offers a beautiful, wild plant harvested at altitude in its natural habitat. Arnica montana is carefully preserved by responsible picking.

Go behind the scenes as Boiron’s passionate team of botanists, pharmacists, and other experts cultivate the Arnica montana plant.

Boiron's Good Practices

To preserve Arnica, a wild plant threatened with extinction, Boiron has set up good practices for picking with detailed specifications.

Each year, between approximately June 1 and July 20, twenty or so professional pickers harvest Arnica for Boiron. They pick the entire plant with a part of the root in the high‑altitude meadows of six mountainous regions: the Vosges, the Alps, the Massif Central, Ardèche, the Pyrenees and Aveyron.

To preserve wild plants, promote biodiversity and ensure an Arnica montana crop of excellent quality, Boiron Laboratories have set up detailed specifications. We require strict picking conditions, such as:

Boiron's Best Practices
"We require that our pickers are also botanists. They must know a large part of the plant species and know how to recognize plants in their natural habitat," explains Françoise Merceron, a pharmacist and head of plant purchasing for Boiron Laboratories. She adds, "It is also important for the pickers to respect nature. Arnica montana is a species where you really have to pay attention when picking it to always leave part of the plant in place so that it can renew itself, and we can have the necessary resources for future years.

Only 30% of a picking site’s potential is to be harvested to ensure the sustainability of the species.

Botanical species must be harvested or grown away from industrial or urban zones, intensive or traditional farms, or roads in order to avoid pollution as much as possible.

The plants must be sorted from all other plant species and cleaned of anything else foreign to the ordered plant (dirt, wood debris, stones, etc.).

The health condition of the plants must also be perfect (no aphid attacks, diseases, rust and powdery mildew, etc.).

The plants must be harvested and delivered immediately after harvesting (within 48 hours), in aerated packaging and via refrigerated trucks.

Want to learn more about Boiron’s Good Practices?

These homeopathic medicines may not be right for everyone. Always read and follow the label.