The message of prickly plants

I'm particular to prickly plants. And thorny ones. The bristly-er the better. I like a plant with attitude.

Wild rugosa roses - the best roses for medicine - have extremely bristly canes that fight back ferociously whenever it comes time for me to trim them, unless treated with the utmost deference; meanwhile, their cousin hawthorn's thorns are lethal weapons that can literally blind anyone who blunders into them.

Stinging nettles, there's another one that will inflict pain to the unseeing; and burdock with its velcro-like burrs won't let you pass without something to remember it by.




Wild (aka prickly) lettuce looks meaner than it is, but prickly ash is just as mean as it looks - even if you're lucky enough to spot it before it spots you, it always manages to catch you in its clutches and remind you of just why foragers wear long sleeves and proper shoes "out there", even on the warmest of days.

Oh, and then there's barberry, with its charming dewdrop shaped red berries that will cost you - in blood! Ditto blackberries and the wilder of the raspberries.

Yet, as wicked as all these plants may seem to be to the casual hiker or dog walker, to those who pay attention - I mean really pay attention - to where they're going and what they're doing, they're allies.

My fellow old hippies will remember Ram Dass; his famous slogan applies here -

Be Here Now.

Of course, the prickly plants each have their own application of that advice. And I'll be honest, I haven't worked with all of them so I don't know every one of their individual life-lessons.

But I do know that stinging nettles are particularly helpful for those of us who don't know how to stick to a firm "NO". People who say "maybe" or "I guess that would be all right" don't live in the here and now, they live in some nebulous future where everything will work out in the end even though they know they're caving to something they don't want to do - again. I guess it's the way nettles support the kidneys (that's where we store our fear) that help us be, well, pretty fearless of the judgement we may face if we put our own needs first.

On the other hand, misuse of (ie too much) nettle can bring out our worst qualities, and we become selfish and overly sensitive**.

There's always another side to the coin. Why don't more herbalists talk about that?

I know that prickly ash is particularly helpful for bringing us back into our bodies when we're all spaced out from acute, intolerable pain. Or even just spaced out. But I would imagine - since I'm working with prickly ash right now as I deal with pinched nerve pain - that using it too often or in too high a dosage might .. hmmm. I can't actually finish that thought. I don't know what too much prickly ash could lead to. Nor am I inclined to find out.

Hawthorne, of course, helps us "lead with the heart", and that's a very present-moment way to live. Not the sentimental Hallmark heart, no sir. Those thorns speak to us of boundaries after all. Hawthorn supports a steady heart. An aware heart. If we're working with the flowers, possibly a horny heart.

And although these medicinal plants will "work" for us when we buy them prepackaged in tea bags or nifty little bottles of tincture, their message comes through just a little more clearly when we've been able to grow or gather them ourselves. Meet them in the flesh.

You don't soon forget the funky smell of a hawthorn flower, or the feeling of a nettle sting.

Maybe people wouldn't be inclined to overdo it with nettles (lots of people overdo it with nettles) if they got to know nettle, personally?

Without gloves?

Ha!

If I was to lead people on foraging walks I'd take them to dangerous places. Blackberry patches. Fields where long grasses disguise lurking nettles. Forests with fallen trees and branches that snag and trip. Shady places with blackflies so thick you have to wear a bandana over your face to keep them out of your teeth.

Well okay, maybe not the place with the blackflies. I hate freaking blackflies.

Still - It strikes me that "wildcrafting" and "herbal medicine" are overly romanticised. If I asked you to picture, in your mind, what a "wildcrafter" looks like, what would you "see"? What's that person wearing? Not Birkenstock sandals, I hope!

Gathering wild foods and medicines, even when its not the particularly prickly ones, brings us out into a rather dangerous world. A world that requires sturdy footwear no matter the weather, because sweaty feet are better than injured feet. But that rather dangerous world makes us tough, practical and aware. You have to be able to look ahead several steps at all times, scan for thorny things or wet ground or that fallen barbed wire fence you're about to get tangled up in.

You have to be able to learn to tolerate a nettle sting because even when you wear gloves and long sleeves it's going to get you in the one place you're not covered.

And that's a lesson in itself. It's impossible to be entirely protected; it's better not to try, it's better to just be aware. Grasp the nettle, so to speak.***

Besides, when you learn how to scan for the stuff you need to avoid, that's when you find the treasures. That fallen log? Don't change direction and go around it, climb over it, then check the other side. It might be covered in turkey tail mushrooms.

And - eventually - you learn to discern when the land is telling you that you're not meant to be in that place. It will do that. Wild parsnip, with its caustic sap that burns sensitive skin like acid, grows prolifically in places where the land has been abused in some way and is trying to recover. It thrives - ironically enough - where glyphosate or other nasty chemicals have previously drenched the soil. You probably don't want to go there anyway.

It's not just the prickly plants, then, that tell you to PAY ATTENTION, they all have their reasons for growing where they do.

There's bigger picture out there that foraging teaches us to see. The one where humans are not the centre of the universe and it's not all there just for us to exploit.

But neither are we interlopers. The land accepts us, welcomes us, once we get to know its ways. It helps us to learn to be not quite such bumbling, unaware idiots as we've become by living in climate controlled, bug free houses. It's only been a few generations since we belonged out there, so it doesn't take more than a few years to relearn what that belonging means.




**Speaking of overly sensitive, here's an anecdote from the old days I was hanging out with my friend the Native Medicine Woman. Whenever she was faced with a weepy, complaining, fearful woman she would tell her, "Oh fer crissakes woman, get your clitoris off the end of your nose!"

*** Re "grasp the nettle". The internet is kinda wrong/kinda right when it says: grasp the nettle definition: to force yourself to be brave and do something that is difficult or unpleasant.

In fact, the 'stingers' on stinging nettles are more like hairs or fine shards of glass and easily crushed. Grasping the plant firmly means the stingers collapse and cannot inject you with all the lovely chemicals that make your skin itch and burn.

However, it's not fool proof. Some part of you will accidentally brush the plant gently and you will get stung. But it's not that bad, at least not once you get used to it.

Some of us even enjoy it.