ROVIN'
AND RAVIN' WITH MIKE
Copyright © 2001 by Michael
Segers, All rights reserved
Brought
to you by Peanut.org
Meeting Our Plant Neighbors
This column often turns into a lovefest with the Internet, the great, big, world wide web of information and ideas preserved and communicated by modern technology. Unfortunately, there are many other webs that are disappearing as rapidly as the Internet is expanding. One of those is the rich web of humans and plants that has given us so much of our food and medicine.
I didn’t realize just how far from this web of common sense, practical know-how, and tradition I had gotten until I recently took a walk with my friend Jean Mitchell through a few acres in which she had identified about eighty distinct kinds of plants. It was almost a mystical experience. Where I saw green, she saw greens. Where I saw a clump of weeds, she saw several different plants. Where I saw a vague, neutral background, she saw a complex world, a web of beings linked to each other by various needs and gifts.
Although we were walking near Plant City, Florida, at a park called Dinosaur World, you can find these plants (in fact, I remember seeing two of them) in Worth County. One is a little herb or wild flower (perhaps weed) with a connection to Native Americans. Another is a bush with strong European roots (perhaps a pun), and one is a particularly stately tree.
All three have colorful roles in history and herbalism. With the first mention of each plant, I am linking to the hyper-text version of A Modern Herbal, which was published in 1931, by Mrs. M. Grieve, which offers a good bit of information and a distinct flavor of life seven decades ago in rural England. As I read this traditional knowledge, ironically on the Internet, I feel a great sense of loss. Why don’t we know these things anymore?
The elder
is a plant that I have known all my life, although until this past week, I did
not know its name. Mrs. Grieve
gives us a rich history of the plant, which now (April) is glorious with its
distinctive white blooms. Elder is
best known for elderberry wine; the berries can be eaten, and they are a special
favorite of birds. Various parts of the plant have a record of various uses,
especially the delicate flowers, which Jean assures me can be battered and
fried.
I remember seeing elder blossoms on my grandparents’ farm in southern Worth County when I was a child. I’ve heard of elderberry wine for years, but never until Jean took me surfing the amazing net of wild plants did I associate the name and the plant. Now, I have tried to move a little elder tree to my back yard, and I’m hoping for the best.
I have for many years known about the “pukeweed” or lobelia which might have been one of the herbs Native Americans used to purify themselves (by making themselves vomit). I had no idea what the plant looked like, until Jean pointed out to me what I would have dismissed as a weed, although it is a traditional favorite in English country gardens.
It has quite a background of being used as a medicinal herb, but I would suggest that you avoid it. In some doses, it can be fatal, and even in a very small piece, which I chewed to prepare this article, it is a memorably horrible thing.
On the other
hand, wild
cherry is a delight. For some
years, I owned a piece of land in Worth County that had wild cherry trees
growing on it, and I had harvested their bark (which I had previously purchased
at health food stores) to make a particularly effective and good-tasting cough
remedy. I was especially ashamed,
then, when Jean pointed out to me that I had walked by an impressive wild cherry
tree hundreds of times and had never even noticed it, not even during my recent
bout of cold and flu that lasted far too long.
(I could not get a satisfactory photo of the wild cherry, but at least
you can identify the typical rough bark as well as the leaves.)
Much has been written about the loss of plant species, especially in the Amazon rain forests, but we are also losing touch with the plants in our midst. Who knows how rich a medicine cabinet the typical suburban lawn is—at least until the happy householder drenches everything in weed-killer? Where is this knowledge, and what can we do to preserve it?
The day before I had my memorable walk with Jean, I spoke to a club made up of third, fourth, and fifth graders (roughly, ages eight to eleven). I asked them how many had a computer at home; they all raised their hands. Then, I asked who could remember a time before there was a computer in the house. Of a group of about forty, only three raised their hands. So, their folklore deals with the good or bad old days B.C. (before computer), just as the folklore of people of my generation involves the family’s first television set. The new survival skills don’t include being able to identify medicinal herbs but being able to fill out all the HMO’s paperwork.
And so, I am gradually shifting from a rove through the diverse green web to which Jean introduced me to a rave about the usual suspects. As usual, of course, I must remind you that I am not a medical professional, so please do not let anything here that sounds like medical advice take the place of consulting with a licensed medical professional.
This time, I must add a special warning about dealing with plants in the wild. You must be very sure of the identity of such plants, and you must recognize a couple of problems characteristic of our age. Some very useful herbs have been harvested almost to extinction, and so, it is better to leave them alone. Other plants can become toxic from exposure to pesticides and herbicides or (in the case of kudzu, which, no matter how maligned it is, has a variety of medicinal and culinary uses) exposure to automobile emissions if it grows on the side of busy roads.
Keep your feet dry (although your feet may get damp as you surf this web), your heart full of noble thoughts, and your touch a little light with the weed-killer. Who knows? You might be destroying a cure for cancer, or at least a plant with some intriguing traditions. Pardon me, but I must go check what I’ve just discovered was two separate ferns in one clump in my back yard. One of them may be the royal fern, which, Jean assures me, is relatively rare.
Next: "More Plant Neighbors"