Fall Foraging Favorites
Four Medicinal Plants To Gather For Your Winter Apothecary
You might think that just because summer is over, so is the foraging season. But that couldn’t be farther from the truth. Many medicinal favorites just start coming into their vitality right around (or after) the first frost the season. In this week’s post I’ll tell you my four favorite medicinal plants to harvest in the fall.
Roots & Fruits
Nearly all of the plants I’ll mention here are roots or a fruits, which makes sense when you consider where plants are putting their energy right now. Like I mentioned in this Wildcrafting Guide, a key component to harvesting plants is knowing the best time to do it, and this includes knowing when to harvest what part of the plant. While you can endlessly dive into the intricacies of this practice (what time of day to harvest, when in the moon cycle to harvest), the very least all wildcrafters should know is when certain parts of the plant are in season.
In the fall, plants begin to draw their energy down into the root system (and away from the aerial parts of the plant) to store vitality for the winter ahead. For some fruit bearing plants, they may also still be putting energy into the development of these fruiting bodies.
So although you can still harvest some leafy plants this time of year to dry them for later use in the winter (and some people say the early spring greens like dandelion and chicory are delicious to harvest in the cool temps of fall, which mimic that of spring), I tend to focus on things like roots and fruits. Here are some of my favorites.
Rosehips
My mentor always says its best to wait for one to two frosts before harvesting Rosehips and this year I experienced the truth in that first hand. While you can harvest Rosehips technically anytime after they appear on a Rose bush (so long as the Rose in question hasn’t been treated with chemicals), they tend to be mushy and require more careful handling before a frost.
Although I have several rose bushes growing in my garden, I prefer to harvest wild rose (Rosa woodsii) whenever possible, as I believe it makes better medicine. Wild plants tend to feel more innately connected to their ecosystem, and have learned to survive and thrive on their own. There’s something to be said about putting this kind of living intelligence into your own body, rather than a rosehip that’s been babied and coddled along all summer in your garden.
Besides being delicious in tea, Rosehips are incredibly high in Vitamin C and a great way to boost your immune system during cold season, or even as a remedy for seasonal allergies (combine them with nettles in an overnight infusion for a great allergy tea).
When harvesting Rosehips, you’ll want to lay them out to dry somewhere with plenty of air circulation (they are a fruit after all). Once hardened into wrinkly little balls (yes I said that), store them in a glass jar. You’ll need a mortar and pestle to mash the fruits open when using them for tea, but you’ll want to be sure you can completely strain out the fruit before drinking. Rosehips contain tiny hair-like fibers that are extremely irritating to your throat when ingested, so don’t skip this step. You can combine rose hips with rose petals and some hot milk to make a delicious full-spectrum1 medicinal moon milk.
Dandelion root
Another of my favorite plants to harvest in the fall are dandelion roots. Dandelion is a gentle yet effective diuretic, and as such can help move congestion/stagnant energy from places like your kidney and liver. I like to drink dandelion tea whenever I feel like I need a little detox, or if I’m trying to rid my skin of some sort of rash or allergic reaction.
Dandelion root is pretty easy (as far as roots) to dig up, and because of the abundance of its growth, there’s no need to worry about replanting the crown. I like to use a Hori Hori (or other long garden knife) for this task, and start by making small cuts into the ground to try and understand the direction of the main taproot (and thereby harvest as much as possible), rather than just unceremoniously cutting out what I see or yanking from the basal rosette of the plant (which doesn’t work).
Once dug out, roots should be cleaned, cut and dried for later use in tea.
Tip: A good rule of thumb when processing roots is to do it as soon as possible after digging them up. Many roots become too hard to easily cut within a few hours of being harvested, and for some (like Oregon Grape Root) it happens within an hour.
I like to drink a combination of roasted and dried dandelion root, since I prefer the taste of the roasted root, but still want to get as much medicine as possible (and the process of roasting likely degrades some of this medicinal potency).
A note about harvesting roots: be sure you can properly ID what you’re harvesting. One way to do this is to ID the aerial parts of the plant (like the basal rosette of the dandelion) and trace back your roots to the attached plant (to be sure you didn’t get any stragglers from other plants). Remember: plants will look different in the fall than they did in the summer. It sounds obvious, but if you’re going to wildcraft plants, you need to account for these differences in your skillset.
Roots can be very very potent medicine and incorrectly ID’ing a plant only to drink tea from its roots, has the potential to be a deadly mistake. Pick up a good plant ID book and get comfortable ID plants before digging them up or using them to make medicine.
Other roots to harvest in fall:
Mullein root- Harvest the first year root of this wild-growing plant and tincture it for an effective diuretic and urinary tract astringent. I’ve also heard the root is specifically indicated for lower back pain, although I haven’t read much about this use case.
Burdock root- Another good root for “detoxifying”, that is primarily as a blood purifier. Combine it with dandelion root tea to clean your system after illness or infection.
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We call something full-spectrum when using two or more parts of the same plant, ie. the petals and the fruit, or the leaves and the root. This normally requires that you harvest from different parts of the plant at separate times of year, then combine them into one tincture or tea.
Love this one! I’m going to harvest my rose hips before winter! 🥰❤️