It was a colder than usual March day, and I was teaching a plant walk at the edge of a farm. We had just had 10 inches of snow, and whilst digging through a drift to get at some burdock, several students suddenly stepped back with a squelch and a chorus of “ewwwwws!!!”. They had found the storm broken branches of Siberian elm. The cracked bark, when meeting the melting snow, had begun to ooze mucilage onto their boots, leaving 8-inch strings of slime as they lifted their feet. At the time I remember thinking, Now that’s a moistening herb.

When used correctly, plant medicine can be super effective for those bumps in the road that seem to come with any proper adventure! Fortunately for us, there are a number of super common weeds here on the Front Range of Colorado and throughout the US that make up an ever present summer first aid kit.

The Perfect Summer Tea

If you pick your sumac fruits too early, you end up with slightly yellow water and the merest trace of flavor. Make sure your fruits are deepest red, and have a sour tang to them when you taste a drupe-it should be a pretty potent flavor.

Doctor Seuss was definitely consulted when this plant was created.

From the fluffy, alien looking fruits, to the scraggly antler-like fuzzy branches, this plant is straight out of the Lorax.
 
Its also one of our more charismatic New England plants, and makes one of my favorite teas for hot weather.

The other graminoids, while not true grasses, are truly beautiful, and full of fascinating flowers and uses.

Of course, 'graminoids' would also be the perfect name for the main characters of a plant based alien movie "The Attack of the Graminoids"-someone should get on that.)

Bread! Beer! Sugar!

Without grasses, these rather delightfully corrupting substances wouldn’t even exist.

Mints have a tendency towards stirring up the mucous membranes (that’s all those pink shiny places inside the body that we try not to think about).

So while they definitely affect the whole body, they have an especial affinity for a few specific areas.

Invasive. Exotic. Introduced.

These are dirty words in the lingo of many botanists and naturalists. The division that this creates in the botanical/herbal world is astonishing.

Parrots beak. Lousewort. Elephantella.

With common names like these, it’s hard not to be interested in this plant.

Cyme comes from the French word cime, meaning ‘top/summit’. This one is a bit more capitalist, as the flowers on cymes essentially bloom from the top down.

Spike, Solitary, and Head may all sound like biker gang nicknames. But in fact, these are some of the delightfully nerdy terms used to describe flowers.

Cabin fever. Climbing the walls. Winter Blues.

If you live in a northern climate like New England, you probably know the feeling. This is where Alteratives come in, the ultimate spring cleaners.

Take away the mint family and your spice rack becomes a very boring place. Many of the most common cooking herbs are in this family. Not so coincidentally, they are also some of our most common medicinal herbs.

In the past few years working in herbal medicine, I have heard a number of opinions on herbs versus conventional medicine, particularly pharmaceutical drugs.

To better address the concerns and controversy of this subject, I’ve consolidated the more opposed viewpoints that I have heard over the years.

Like so many fragrant herbs, spicebush is a carminative. Carminative comes from the Latin carminare, meaning ‘makes you fart’. Okay, so not really. But it’s actual translation comes to something along the lines of ‘remove impurities’, so in essentials it comes to the same thing.

Pancakes. Fall. Canada. 

None of these would be quite the same without maple trees. From delicious syrup, to habitat for a host of native critters, maple trees are just plain magical.

A potent medicinal, this herb has all the right actions to shake things up for spring.

A prodigious weed, yellow dock has a tap root that ends only once it reaches the earth’s molten core (at least this is what I assume, because I can never seem to get the whole root out). 

Alpinus: Pertaining to the Alps. When you see this one, don’t think Julie Andrews in a nun outfit. Some plants with this species name have never even heard of the Alps.

When you see ‘gogue’ at the end of a word, think Go! Go! Go! It’s like a cheering squad for whatever body system it’s associated with.