Finding the Medicine

The plants as a way of remembering ⚘⚘⚘

“Sometimes the best medicine is right in your own backyard.”

This theory held when my mom was battling an intense cold a few weeks back. The one thing that helped her most? A tincture of fresh Echinacea flower (Echinacea purpurea). And although she bought it at the time¹, everything she needed to make that particular medicine was even closer at hand than the natural foods store.

It was buried beneath a blanket of snow in her back garden.

“Cone flowers,” as they’re often called, aren’t just an ornamental garden favorite. They’re also highly medicinal— acting as an immune stimulant that can help your body fight off the early stages of bacterial or viral infections.²

The best way to know if the medicine is good? It’s easy: Just bite into it. In July, or whenever your local cone flowers begin to bloom, gather a variety of unopened and opened blooms. You’ll know they’re going to make good medicine if the taste of the flower tingles on your tongue³. The same is true of prepared tinctures: The slight tingle guarantees its quality.

Although the idea of plant wisdom isn’t new, it’s one we’ve lost touch with as a society. For most of us, it’s been generations since a family member knew how to grow and use medicinal herbs. And so we’re raised with conventional pharmaceuticals, and only a few (and very, very mysterious) natural remedies in our healing cabinets.

When these natural remedies actually work, it feels like a miracle. How could something that wasn’t made in a lab really heal us? Easy. It’s been doing so for thousands of years.

To assume western medicine is the only kind worth using isn’t just narrow-sighted. It’s also denying the power of the other kingdoms of life⁴ that we share this planet with: The mushrooms, the bacteria, the animals, and of course—the plants.

Up until this past spring, my skepticism surrounding all things “natural” was so thick you could cut it with a knife. I can clearly remember the afternoon when I asked my then-gardener and now-mentor, “But that herbalism stuff doesn’t really work, right?”

Later that week, I was in the local bookstore scouring the shelves for everything I could find about it. I left with two books tucked under my arm, and spent hours in the warming spring sun, leafing through their pages.

The thing about skepticism is that it’s not always a bad thing. In an age filled with hoaxes and schemes, and women like Gwyneth Paltrow selling the benefits of (and literally selling) vagina eggs— skepticism, like fear, can be healthy. You just want to be sure you’re applying it to the right things.

But I didn’t write this post to convert you. In fact, I’m not in the business of conversion at all. Just remembering. And I think the plants come and find us when we’re ready—just the way they found me that spring afternoon.

So you can really think of this letter as something more like an invitation.

An invitation to remember the things our collective ancestry once knew. To relearn the old ways, the ones where other kingdoms of life were more closely woven together with our own. The age when we were (on the whole) a lot less lonely, because children were raised and problems were solved as a village, rather than as individuals. Rituals were the norm, and happened frequently— not just once or twice a year. In short, the entire psyche behind our existence was much, much different. And so this letter isn’t one of converting, or even of learning. It’s an invitation of remembering.

And I’m so grateful you’re here to do this work with me.

(Photos by Annie Spratt and Francis Naung)

1. Author has every intention of making her mother into an herbalist.

2. Cech, Richo. Making Plant Medicine. Herbal Reads, 2016.

3. Before biting into any flower, you should be 100,000% sure of what it is. Spend the time to familiarize yourself with the local flora and fauna before engaging in any foraging practices (ie. picking flowers that you haven’t grown organically from seed). In the words of my amazing teacher Juliet Blanketspoor: “There are old foragers, and there are bold foragers, but there are no old, bold foragers.” Foraging mistakes can be deadly. Tread with caution.

4. For an excellent rambling on this and related topics, pick up a copy of The Herbal Lore of Wise Women and Wortcunners: The Healing Power of Medicinal Plants, by Wolf D. Storl.