Medicine chest 3 - Slippery Elm - the safe and the not so safe.

Here's a surprise for you all, I do some of my foraging in the retail environment! Ha!

Slippery Elm Bark - While we do have slippery elm trees in our neck of the woods (and I'm pretty sure I have a couple of weedy youngsters coming up in the wilder edges of our yard) I have yet to experiment with making my own slippery elm bark powder.

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.