Garbling the message

Herbalists use the word "garble" to describe the process of preparing plant material for use. Dictionaries call this definition "obsolete". (sigh)

To everyone else, to garble is to mix up words or ideas so badly that the original meaning or intent is obscured.

I can tell you, when it comes to all things herbal, the message out there on the internet is garbled in the second sense. Pretty badly, too.

Garbling the comfrey roots & a couple of nifty examples of the Doctrine of Signatures

There's a lot to squeeze into this post!

Early spring and late fall are the times we go after root medicine. Right about now, still early spring where I live, while the leaves of herbaceous perennial plants like dandelion and comfrey are still small their roots are still fat and full of stored goodness.

This is one of my many comfrey plants:

This is what happens when you drop ONE comfrey leaf on your lawn.

Garbling the echinacea, and why you should try your hand at it too.

I have read so many different takes on harvesting and using this plant. Use 5 yr. old plants, only. Use Purpurea only, or Augustfolia only. Yes, you can use other cultivars; no you can't. Yes you can use the leaves and flowers or even the seeds; no you can't. Use the rhizomes only; use the little roots; don't use the little roots .. damn it, if I was waiting for consensus I would never use this plant. You know what I think when I see so many opinions? Go with your gut. So here's how I garbled my echinacea plants today; how you do yours is entirely up to you.

Garbling the mullein

I love this time of year.

We're not quite in autumn weather yet, but here and there one early scarlet or golden tree stands out on the green hills. We're hearing a few geese gathering on the river below us where they chat all night long. They sound like people from a distance. The nannyberries are ripening, too. So we're getting close.

The purple ones are the ripe ones. There's not much to a nannyberry (Viburnam lentago) but they're a great little nibble. (Don't believe what you may read on the internet about slicing them or putting them in smoothies. If you meet one in person you'll see how silly a notion that is.) They're maybe the size of an egg shaped blueberry and half their volume is a nice flat stone that's fun to kinda 'worry around' in the mouth while wandering down a gravel road. The taste is oddly reminiscent of banana.

Meanwhile on the ground the herbaceous perennials and the first year biennials are putting on a rush of growth. Mullein is looking like it is getting ready for bed in its flannel pyjamas.

This first year mullein rosette is a good 2 ft across. Those ratty leaves nearby are a pathetic, slug-eaten comfrey. 

Speaking of eyebright

We do a lot of stopping at the side of the road on our rambles.

Paul (my husband) (and photographer) (and all around good guy) has developed an interesting knack for stopping the car right next to patches of eyebright growing at the roadside. It's quite by accident, yet it just keeps happening.

Very tricky stuff to get a pic of, eyebright.

A 2fer post - Oats galore and garbling the usnea

Just over a week ago we went for one of those evening drives, when the light is all golden on the fields and shadows play in the forests. Down our favourite back road on Calumet Island we came across a field of oats, still green, but cut down that day. The smell was indescribably beautiful, especially combined with all the wildflowers of the ditches and the dew just coming on.

As there is no gate, I ventured into the field and discovered, to my delight, that the all around the edges of the field, where weeds meet crop, the farmer had left oats standing. Score! I love oatstraw infusions, so I gathered an armload and brought them home. I had no knife - silly me - but they come up by the roots very easily.

Garbling the dandelion

(Originally published October 14, 2014, here )


Take a gander at these beauties. Note, especially, how large the roots are compared to the amount of leaf! I used a pitch fork to get these out of the ground. You sort of have to if you want to get much, and of course you never get the whole root. Which means you get more from the same plant next year, of course!

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