A crockpot decoction experiment

This post isn't strictly about mullein, but it begins there.

I've got my slow cooker on the counter and it's on a good simmer. After a few hours cooking last evening and sitting to cool overnight it's been humming along all day. It holds my latest experiment, a couple of days' long deep decoction of 4 or 5 quite small first year mullein plants, roots and leaves together. One doesn't usually decoct (as in simmer for a long time) the leaves of plants because they're too delicate; decoctions are for the tough stuff like barks and roots. But as I said, this is an experiment. Besides, mullein leaves are made of stronger stuff than most leaves, and I want to find out just what they'll offer up this way.

I dug the plants out of the snow yesterday as we were having a bit of a thaw - oh man, that was fun - because, well, I have lots of mullein out there and I could. It's been calling me, mullein has.





As I brushed the snow off the plants, I couldn't help but marvel at how loose and friable the soil was right under that protective rosette of leaves, while inches away it was hard as rock. The root of each one slipped up and out smooth and easy, no breaking off and leaving half behind in the ground.

Mullein is just a really interesting plant. Those thick fuzzy leaves freeze to a perfect crisp so they'll snap if you mess with them in winter, and that's exactly what makes them so handy. If you need mullein in February, you can nearly always spot the plants as mullein-shaped bumps under the snow. Brush the snow off, snap your leaves from their rosette and bring them into the house where they will thaw perfectly. Winter picked mullein leaves are almost superior to summer picked because they're always plump. They're never bug-bit, either, any damaged leaves have died back with the hard frosts. Taking these facts together, there's almost no reason to dry mullein leaves for winter use if you have them growing in the back yard. They're just waiting patiently out there, ready to be made into compresses, fomentations, teas, steams, syrups - and depending on how my experiment goes, maybe even decoctions.

I long ago discovered the superiority of a bone broth simmered for hours/days in the slow cooker over that made on top of the stove. Diffusive all around heat surrounding the bones for a broth brings out far more of their goodness than direct heat from underneath. If you've ever seen mullein roots, you'd agree that they are bone-like, and they certainly are good for the bones. So, like any good herbalist who goes by 'signatures', I'm going on the theory that treating them like bones as I make them into medicine will bring out their best.

I usually make what I call decocted tinctures with mullein root (otherwise known as a double extraction). That means I simmer half the roots I've gathered in water on the stove top for an hour or so, strain that, then slooowly reduce the liquid down to about half or even a third of its original volume; that's the decoction part. Next, I take the 'marc' (that's the roots I decocted) add the rest of my fresh roots, put them in a jar with vodka as for tincture, and add in the decoction. After sitting for a few weeks, this gives me both the water and alcohol soluble qualities. It's more economical too. If you're using a remedy topically, you can go through quite a lot of it; the amounts of vodka required can get expensive, prohibitively so. Even though decocted tinctures are effective and more economical, I'd still like to simplify them and leave out the alcohol altogether, if I can, hence this experiment with a really deep decoction.

Once (and only once) I tried making something more akin to a liniment by using rubbing alcohol as the menstruum (that's what we call the liquid in the remedies we make), by special request for a client. I didn't like it at all. Call me fussy, but I want everything about a remedy to be harmless, and rubbing alcohol is not harmless.

Above all, I want versatility. There are times when you want a medicine to work both internally and topically, so being able to use one remedy both ways is the ideal. I also want my medicines to smell like the plant they're made of. Tincturing or decocting mullein root brings out the fragrance of vanilla, and part of its beauty - and medicine - lies in taking great whiffs of that (not safe to do with rubbing alcohol!). The tastes and fragrances of herbs trigger mysterious healing mechanisms within the body. We don't yet fully understand them from a scientific point of view, but that doesn't matter, the best medicines have always tapped into them anyway.

So as my experimental crockpot decoction decocts I can't help lift the lid now and then and breathe deeply. The longer it simmers the deeper, darker that vanilla aroma is becoming .. right now it's making me think of chocolate cake!

There are a few hard and fast rules when it comes to medicine making. There are traditions and there are guidelines and it's really best to follow those at first so we can learn first hand why they're there. Then, once we've really got the basics down, there's opportunity to branch out and experiment. We take our cues from the plants themselves. We know not to boil flowers because most of them will disintegrate if they're exposed to high temperatures for long periods. But we also know that rose petals, for instance, like to be boiled (well, simmered), it brings out their deeper qualities. Knowing both the rules and exceptions well means we can extrapolate when we brainstorm on how we might be able to find variations without wasting valuable resources.

In the European traditions, the leaves and flowers of many of the plants are considered the most valuable medicinally, but the Native Americans prize the roots of those very same plants. In TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) plant parts might be dried, fermented, dried again and then simmered for long periods of time before they're considered suitable for medicine. Flower essence practitioners float blossoms on spring water in the sun for the briefest period possible. Then there's gemmotherapy (something I'll be trying this spring) that uses the buds and very youngest shoots of trees and shrubs.

In other words, we can coax different qualities from the plants using different methods; each culture has their own preference because form follows function - after all, our environments dictate the sorts of ailments and injuries human beings will be have to deal with. Snake bites of the American Plains require one sort of medicine and the contagious lung diseases of a crowded European city require another. There really is no such thing as "herbal medicine", there is only healing, and many ways to go about it.

There are rashes on the skin that begin on the skin, like contact with something like poison ivy, and ailments that manifest as skin rashes but originate deep within the body, most often the liver. Each has to be treated accordingly. So before we can know which medicine and how it should be prepared for an ailment, we have to be able to think on different yet interconnecting levels - the workings of the body, what's gone awry, how best to bring the corresponding medicine out of each plant and then how best to get it into the area of the body that most needs support to right itself again.

Here in "the West" we've mostly lost the oral traditions of the old healers, so in some cases we really have to begin from scratch. That's kind of sad and frightening but it's also, wow, really exciting too. Some of the old ways have survived, passed down in families or recorded in books, and some amazing work is being done by current herbalists. Those sources are all of tremendous value. From there we have to go to the plants themselves and experiment so that they can teach us too.

Experience is the best teacher of all. The differing smells and tastes produced as I try different methods of preparation speak to me of how deep the medicine will go, how quickly it will disperse through the body, whether it will stimulate the organ or tissue I want to influence, or tighten and tone, or relax, or moisten, or dry up excess moisture. Nothing is more fascinating to me than learning the language of the plants by way of my senses.

Follow my thinking here for a moment ..

The brew in my slow cooker got lively for a while there, bubbling away like mad and making the lid jiggle. Each time I'd go and stir it down I was looking at the colour of the leaves - amazingly, they haven't lost their colour after hours of simmering. Testing the texture of the roots just now I find they're so soft they disintegrate to the touch and as they do so they release a soft - and I would guess soften-ing - almost creaminess into the liquid. Interesting. Mullein roots have an affinity for bones and joints and kinks in the spine, they help lubricate creaking joints and slide disks back into place, heal bursa and normalize synovial fluids. A slight creaminess to a preparation used externally will soften the skin, perhaps coaxing the pores open (because pores like it when you soften things up), allowing the medicine to penetrate inward. I was hoping for that because I'm not only wondering if I can replace the expensive tincture based remedies, I'm also looking for an alternative to topical preparations based on oils. Oils and ointments and unguents tend to be messy, stain the pyjamas and sheets and after a while they have the potential to clog the skin.

There's a sheen on the surface of my decoction, that's the volatile oils being released from the leaves - also interesting. It's those volatile oils we're depending on when we use mullein leaf in a steam or tea or syrup, they open our breathing passages and thin stuck mucous so we can clear it, thus calming wracking coughs and relieving aching sinuses. That's the most widely known and proven action of mullein.

What's my purpose in combining the roots and leaves?

Well, while I learned from the writings of one herbalist (and confirmed with my own experience) that the roots are extremely helpful for bones and joints, another herbalist I respect uses the leaves to that same purpose.

My theory - If those volatile oils of the leaves can thin mucous and open breathing passages so it's more easily expelled (and by heck, they sure do) maybe they do the same inside a joint. Thinning and expelling, hmmm .. Debris from an injury can get stuck, impair movement and retard healing just as mucous can get stuck and impair breathing .. is that how this works? Mullein has an affinity to the lymph system too, another way it clears out debris. Hmmm ..

My long slow decoction experiment is so that I can watch and smell and taste as the leaves release their goodness into the liquid, thus teaching me through my senses how what they can do for the breathing could possibly translate to a healing action on joints and the spine. While I can take a more experienced herbalist at his word that leaves can perform the same action as the roots (it's Matt Wood after all, he's never steered me wrong before!) I'm just a show-me kind of person. Once this brew is made, it might be some time before I have the opportunity to use it, meanwhile the making of the medicine gives me something to mull over.

Mull over mullein, get it? hahaha - sorry. Sometimes I have trouble finding that last line for a post!