Herbal Experiments I'm Trying

Well, it's been a wacky fall and winter so far for me and mine.  Plant-wise, I just ran out of steam and quit doing any mowing along about August.  My husband had a medical emergency and came really close to dying.  That sort of blew my mind as far as getting any real blogging done.  He has recovered a lot, although he has a long way to go.

So, here's some of my plant activities.  I've made tinctures of passion flower, lemon balm, yarrow, and St. John's wort.  All are in 80 proof vodka.  I strained the SJW and put it in a dropper bottle, and I have used it a few times.  The others, I blush to say, I have not strained yet.  I can't believe it would hurt them any.  I will fill you in on how it goes when I do strain them. 

For some reason, I'm a little afraid of the passion flower.  I'm sure of my plant ID and I'm sure that it is a good herb for helping you relax and sleep.  I've read just enough stories of herbalists poisoning themselves that I move pretty cautiously.  And I don't know, but it seems kind of strong.  It smells kind of strong and bad and it has a lot of gooey liquid in it.  Glabrous is the herbalist word, right?  Nope, that means "hairless."  Mucilaginous is a better word.

I like the weedy winter look of my place with it unmown, but some of the stickers out there are vicious!  My daughter and I went out to make sure the well house was OK for the winter, and we both got our clothes covered.  I think the offender is called "Spanish Needles."  Ouch.  I wore thick gloves and the blasted things worked their way inside. 

I did a little research on medicinal uses for some of the plants I have in abundance here.  Most don't make the who's who list of favorite wild herbs.  For instance, I've seen exactly two straggling mulleins and zero echinacea in the three summers I've been out here.  What I have are mule-tail and Queen Anne's lace.  Lots and lots and lots of QAL!!  I had intentions of rigging up a box for drying them and making all kinds of lovely crafts.  I read about a wedding that was all done in dried QAL.  Wouldn't that be lovely?  But, no, mine all went to seed and sticker.  Wonder how many millions of them I will have next summer?



Anyway, I hope you all have a wonderful new year filled with all kinds of learning and lovely plants!  Always look for the medicine behind the stickers!!  And the silver lining in the clouds!

Great Online Group for Learning about Wild Plants!

Just have to share a link to a group that I am really excited to have found.  It's http://herbwifery.org/forum/.  There are some extremely knowledgeable herbalists among the folks posting.

The extreme heat has really done a number on my little wild St. John's Wort plants.  They are showing their red!  It's been such a hot summer.  Other plant news, the pawpaws are still on the tree, not ripe yet, but I'm hoping I can beat the squirrels to them when they do ripen.  Anyway, happy herbing!!

Found the Golden Eggs!

This was my favorite book to read the kids when they were small.  Anyway, I've been fascinated by the idea of golden bug eggs, and was thrilled to see these on a leaf of arugula:

Unfortunately, I couldn't photograph them so that you could see the golden metallic shine, but you could sure see it in person!  But I'm not going to bother with trying to hatch them.

In other plant news around the homestead, my passion flower vines just started to bloom.  The St. John's wort has been blooming for a few days.  It is very small this year and some has dried to a red crisp.  We had a hot snap a few weeks ago which I believe is probably what affected them in that way.  Anyway, both of these plants are good herbs for the mind.  I am trying tincturing in apple cider vinegar this year.  Have some St. John's wort tincture started and have some passion flower vines drying for the purpose of making tincture.

Generally, tinctures are made with alcohol, such as vodka, but as a recovered problem drinker, I'm not sure I want any vodka in the house.  According to one source, alcohol and vinegar bring out different constituents in the plants, so it's not necessarily true that alcohol tinctures are better than vinegar tinctures.  That would depend on the particular plant.

St. John's Wort is good for lifting mild depression, and passion flower is good for insomnia.  The way I understand it, dosing is the same for vinegar tinctures as it is for alcohol based tinctures, which is a half teaspoon 2 or 3 times a day.

I've been making tea in the evening.  I have lemon balm (another good relaxing tea), as well as applemint, pineapple sage, peppermint, spearmint, and anise hyssop.  I have a few blooms of chamomile, too.  Those are in pots, not wild plants.  I'm amazed at how nice they smell and taste.

Queen Anne's Lace

Queen Anne's Lace is blooming now.  We have a lot of it here, and it's really kind of invasive and ever-present, but it sure is pretty while it's blooming.  It's an umbrell.  An umbrell of umbrells.  Look closely at the bloom and you'll see an umbrella arrangement of little umbrellas.  With one cute little dark maroon flower somewhere near the center.  And each of the little umbrells has larger petals around the outer edge.  Such intricacy of design!  Then when it forms seeds, the umbrells all curl toward the center and make a little nest filled with little sticky-burrs.  Cute, interesting, but not too nice if you happen to be wearing pantyhose and get too close.

Queen Anne's Lace is also known as wild carrot.  If you smell the root, you'll notice it smells kind of like carrots.  I wouldn't try eating one unless I was absolutely starving, though.  The umbrell family of plants contains some of the most poisonous of all--the hemlocks!  Of course it also contains some of our favorite herbs, like dill, chervil, and cilantro, as well as carrots and parsnips.  But there have been cases of people dying because they thought they were eating wild carrot when they really had something else.

I read about someone who dried lots of Queen Anne's Lace for wedding decorations.  That would probably be really pretty.  I have one in a vase in front of me that much be six inches in diameter.  It's huge!

I've been interested in a plant that I have all around the place, and I'm starting to think it's actually in the umbrell family.  A plant called sanicle.  There are several of them in the US, and they sometimes go by the name "black snakeroot."  I think I have several varieties of this plant on the property here.  The funny thing is, the name "sanicle" comes from a Latin word that means, "I heal."  Which means the sanicles have been used as healing herbs in centuries past.  I've googled sanicle, and found that it is a medicinal available from some herb suppliers.  Gotta keep learning!

Have a great day botanizing!

My Yearly Post...Is it the Elusive Agrimony?

Actually, I'm hoping to revive this old blog.  I've been visiting a cool herb site, "Little Herban Homestead."  I got interested in the herb agrimony from them but I haven't identified it yet.  (No, it has nothing to do with aggravation in matrimony!)  All I know is that it has a spike of small yellow flowers.  I've been watching closely for yellow spikes, but all I've seen is an obvious clover that blooms all over the place.  Anyway, I went to a friend's country place today and parked right beside a yellow spike!! Immediately I thought of the elusive but intriguing agrimony.  I brought a sample home to check my books.  While on the way, I thought, wouldn't it be funny if this is moth mullein or something.  Sure enough, that's what it was.  I planted it in one of my pots out front.  We'll see if it grows.  I'm not sure if it has much medicinal value.  The scientific name is Verbascum blattaria, and it's in the snapdragon family.

If you know anything about wildflowers, you know these two plants are really not that similar.  Agrimony is in the rose family.  I think it's a little early for it to bloom.  Moth mullein , on the other hand, has larger blooms.  The leaves are a lot different, too.  Agrimony has composite leaves while moth mullein has wavy-edged lancolate leaves.

Obviously, I'm just a amateur at this whole wild-crafting thing.  I love wild plants, though, and June in the Ozarks is certainly a good time to go out botanizing!  (If you don't mind the occasional tick or chigger.)

Poor, Unappreciated Weeds

I think this beautiful milkweed got mowed down by the county road department this morning.  Sigh.  Maybe I can find the "stump" and move it to a safer location.  Butterflies love it.  Pretty, huh?

Thorns

This is a prickly pear in bloom.  The large waxy blooms only last one day.  The thorns on these babies are vicious.  Frankly, I don't like thorns much.  We have a number of thorny things around here - berries, roses, and a locust tree, to name a few.  They always make me think of the curse on the earth in the book of Genesis, and the crown our Savior wore on the cross.

Here's what God told Adam when He confronted him about eating from the forbidden tree:

Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life;
Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field;
 In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

Here are some wild raspberries starting to turn ripe.