Happy New Year, folks! In Vermont we are in Deep Winter, which often means snow up to my bellybutton when I emerge from the woodstove cocoon of our old farmhouse.
The good folks at the Herbal Academy asked me to contribute a piece on circulatory herbs for winter and how best to get them in your belly: Warming Winter Rituals: Herbal Truffles for Good Circulation. Check out the teaser below and click on the link for details, materia medica, and recipes!
Tiny Pony Apothecary has been enjoying a lovely visiting to the beaches, marshes, bogs, and mountains of the Southeast. Check out some of the friends visited in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Western North Carolina and the lowcountry of South Carolina.
Hi friends~ Tiny Pony Apothecary will be documenting the plants in the gardens and wilds that we cultivate and harvest for medicine-making and pleasure. We’d love to have you follow our journey this season. . .
This flower essence is for everyone but especially supportive for teens, peri-menopausal folks, and those of us who make queer magic. Blue cohosh flower essence supports us in sifting through the hesitancy or anxiety we might feel around sex and sexuality, particularly during times of transition, change, and growth, and encourages openness and acceptance of the sacred ways in which we are each made to contribute to the creative and sensual energies of the planet in this body and lifetime.
#foresttherapy #sexpositiveherbalism #caulophyllumthalictroides #rampseasonyall #queermagic #vitalism #feministmedicine #floweressence #subtlebody
When the first spring witch hazel flowers waves their soft fringes at you know maybe it’s going to be okay.
The physiological medicine of witch hazel’s astringency serves to draw lax or sagging tissues together, firming and supporting the structures of the body. In the subtle energetic body, the flower essence also acts in this drawing capacity. Whether pulling the soul upward from the darkness of winter or from a stuck or stagnant location where decision-making feels impossible, the flower essence of witch hazel encourages movement supported by grounded self-knowing and the cultivation of internal light which reaches for the external world. In this way, the flowers of Chinese witch hazel are applied to the subtle body for the purposes of composting, transforming, and releasing trauma and trauma-related stress from the cellular levels of the body.
#herbsfortrauma #plantsgotyourback #queercare #resilience #plantmedicine #subtlebody #witchery
This Mercury retrograde of revisiting + rethinking has been a heart-wringer for all us resilient creatures.
Rose medicine brings warm comfort as we choose to return to our bodies each morning, as we stumble through navigating our own boundaries and one another’s. I’m learning to choose snow magic over fear of slipping on ice, an ongoing process for this lil Southerner, and I’m appreciating the tender rose thorns reminding me to stay open rather than succumbing to resentment from the heartache.
Bust & Mend Grief & Heartbreak Formula is going back up on the website asap, y’all, holler at us or visit the online apothecary for yours.
#rosarugosa #plantmedicine #queermagic #stayopen #goodboundaries #allies #witchery #takecare
My is this fungus en vogue.
In the last year I’ve enjoyed sampling any number of variations on a chaga chai recipe, and nearly every Vermont abode I’m invited into boasts a good size chunk sitting on the mantle or on a kitchen shelf. No matter how strongly my dad instilled in me a resistance to following the crowd, I can’t help it — chaga is pretty great, no bones about it. I don’t even have to make contorted mushroomy faces when I drink the decoction (I’ll make sure to take a photo next time I send Reishi tea down the hatch).
What I like about this herb is: it’s not delicate or lithe or sexy. My teacher 7song, of the Northeast School of Botanical Medicine, used to tell us he thought it looked like the birch was growing a nose. Chaga is a humble-looking thing, barely revealing itself inside the bark tissues it manages to reinvent, a re-maker, a remodeler, collaborating sinuously with the bark it inhabits. The thick sooty black-brown of its craggy outer layers protects a golden corky crumble laced with cream-colored veins, like someone’s gluten-free caramel brownie attempt gone wrong and then burnt. While the latter is a fairly common occurrence, the former is not.
You have to acquire your chaga eye when walking in the birch woods. Inonotus obliquus is magical in the way that woodland creatures are: I can only find it when the mushroom decides to be seen, and its anyone’s guess whether I’ll be able to take it home with me for medicine. Some mushrooms I’ve encountered at head-height or at least within arm’s reach, but most grow between 10 and 30 feet off of the ground. I’ve enacted many a Buster Keaton-goes-camping scene at the bottom end of a long stick, swiping inelegantly at the extrusion as if exerting myself in a blindfolded pinata attempt on stilettos. Or else I’m with someone who is inevitably the larger of the two of us, and I find myself balancing on shoulders with a hatchet in one hand and the chaga crumbling piecemeal on my pal’s head.
Good thing I’m in the circus. But we were talking about chaga.
BOTANY, PHYTOCHEMISTRY, & PHARMOCOLOGY
Most of what we know about chaga as medicine comes from Russian folk medicine and the last 40 years of research, which has demonstrated through studies numbering in the thousands that these mushrooms exert measurable pharmacological effects on the immune, hormonal, and nervous systems. Chaga, scientifically referred to as Innonotus obliquus, are polypores that hardly look like their kin; the common name “clinker polypore” helps describe the tumor-like appearance which bears little resemblance to the other polypores, which are shelf-like and porous on their undersides. Chaga are classified as Basidiomycetes mushrooms, of which 200 species appear to be used medicinally, and are found growing parasitically on white birch, alder, and beech — plentiful in the northeastern United States, Canada, Japan, northern Scandinavia, and Russia — although only the fruiting bodies of those growing birch are used medicinally. The most prized chaga specimens seem to grow on black birch trees in Siberia, which some researchers and enthusiasts say is 40,000 times more densely packed with antioxidants than any foods or supplements found in a natural food store. Unlike many other mushrooms, chaga grow on living substrates, so mind the adage: dead tree, dead chaga.
Nearly 500 years of documentation show that this gnarly polypore has been used in the folk medicine traditions of Russia and Eastern Europe. In 1955, pharmacies in Russia, Eastern Europe, and Japan began selling a refined extract of chaga specifically for stomach and intestinal disorders. The current resurgence of interest in this medicine has resulted in research that suggests its use for many aspects of immune function, including chronic fatigue, tuberculosis, influenza, autoimmune digestive disorders, HIV, diabetes, and a variety of cancers.
One way that herbs are view through allopathic practices is which conditions, symptoms, or diseases they seem to effect. Constitutional herbalism also looks at herbs via their particular energetics (heat, movement, moistness, stimulation — what i think of as an herb’s personality) and its actions (antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, anti-fungal, anti-mutagenic, anti-hyperproliferative, anti-hyperglycemic properties). Chinese medicine calls this herb sweet, cooling, balancing, grounding — that is, the flavor, the temperature, the pulling in of extremes, the sending of energy down through a center. I particularly prize chaga for its reasonable nature, which benefits folks struggling with autoimmune conditions. In its modulating and balancing capacities, chaga can help stimulate an ailing or underactive immune system but soothe an overactive misfiring immune system. That’s a nice friend to have.
Superoxide Dismutase is an enzymatic ally that combats free radical damage through protective and reparative cellular mechanisms. Research tells us that chaga contains the highest concentration of Superoxide Dismutase (SOD) known to planet Earth. For those of us at risk for DNA mutation created by excess free radicals due to radiation and pesticides and other pollutant — oh wait, that’s all of us — we might do ourselves some good by sitting down with a cup of chaga tea on the daily. The mutagenic activity evident in compounds isolated from chaga shows promise in preventing gene-mutation-related conditions such as sickle cell anemia and Downs Syndrome.
While herbalists worth their salt will tell you that isolating a single “active” compound is not the best way to take medicine, such research does yield some information about a medicine’s constituents. Like many other medicinal mushrooms, chaga contains polusaccharides known for their immuno-stimulating actions. At the University of Helsinki, Finnish researchers have found several active lanosterol-type triterpenes, known for their antitumor properties, and most vigorous of which is called inotodiol. The anti-cancer compound betulin is produced in birch trees and absorbed by the chaga fungus, which concentrated the betulin and transformed it into a compound that can be taken orally by human beings.
Which, folks, is really pretty awesome.
There are so many idiosyncratic and quirky facts about chaga that I felt compelled to compile them outside of fluent prose.
+ Russian mushrooms hunters may scale trees with ropes and harnesses for the best booty.
+ Folks say that certain old chaga hunters use a shotgun to blast the higher specimens loose from their moonings.
+ High altitude Siberian prizes have been known to weight over 10 lbs.
+ Only one birch in 15,000 bears chaga, and the ideal age for a good fruiting body is 25 years old.
+ The DNA of Siberian chaga is 30% per cent closer to humans DNA than that of plants.
+ Literary Nobelist Alexander Solzhenitsyn is said to have brewed a variety of medicinal mushroom teas, describing chaga in detail in his writing.
MAKING A GOOD CHAGA DECOCTION 
How does one sweetly solicit this tough crumbly creature to part with its medicine? Most folks agree that a stiff decoction is the thing.
Like burdock, chaga has some constituents that come out in rolling boil and others that transfer to the menstruum in cool water. Most chaga connoisseurs agree that it is best to granulate the specimen (tools of choice include coffee grinder, vita-mix, hammer, and steel mortar and pestle) and then to make an aqueous extraction by soaking the mushroom in cool water for 12-25 hours before bringing to a rolling boil (decocting) for 1-2 hours, or vice versa. If one were to make a tincture, it may be wise to combine such a decoction with a separate tincture, so that the high-proof alcohol does not destroy the polysaccharide molecules in the decoction.
Check out my morning thunder recipe; chaga is a great addition to it. Also, one of the newest editions to the Tiny Pony Apothecary is the Glitter Bones Elixir . . . take a peek!
SOURCES & RESEARCH
Lull, C., Wichers, H.J., Savelkoul, H.F.J. (2005). Antiinflammatory and Immunomodulating Properties of Fungal Metabolites. Mediators and Inflammation. 2005(2): 63–80.
Anticancer effects of fraction isolated from fruiting bodies of chaga medicinal mushroom, Inonotus obliquus. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22135889
Extract of chaga mushroom (Inonotus obliquus) stimulates 3T3-L1 adipocyte differentiation. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21031614
Chaga mushroom extract inhibits oxidative DNA damage in human lymphocytes as assessed by comet assay. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15630179
Chaga mushroom extract inhibits oxidative DNA damage in lymphocytes of patients with inflammatory bowel disease. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18997282
Chemical characterization and biologicalactivity of chaga (Inonotus obliquus), a medicinal mushroom. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25576897
Mycolivia Medicinal Mushrooms The Essence of Nature and Technology. http://www.mycolivia.com/chaga-mushroom/
Alan Muskat and Co. Chaga. http://www.notastelikehome.org/chaga.php
If I was better at handling winter, I’d be moving to Maine.
In mid-July, despairing of finding any sizable quantity of St. John’s wort for my apothecary and feeling restless in what Vermonters call “heat,” I headed to the Maine coast with a companion to find out what my friend Micah has been doing these past four years.
Turns out, he’s been living on a magical island that you can only get to by boat. Micah is the founder of the Atlantic Holdfast Company, a small labor of hand-harvested love, bringing you the loveliest cuts of seaweeds that Neptune is willing to part with. He spends his time harvesting vegetables from ledges awash in salt water with a serrated knife, under the curious gazes of dog-like seals who venture in only occasionally for a nibble.
Micah picked us up from a dock on the southern tip of Deer Isle in a friend’s lobstering boat, which we traded halfway through the Penobscot Bay for a much smaller vessel with an outboard motor. Micah positioned my pal and me just so in the boat, in order to balance the weight in the laden vessel. I learned quickly to tuck my feet under a weighty cooler to prevent myself from being cast overboard in the substantial wind.
After a good half hour of motoring out, we arrived thoroughly goosebumped at a small isle covered in St. John’s wort, and so I was immediately satisfied, notwithstanding the epic kelp harvesting, rock-hopping, beach-combing, and roasted goat and lobster dinner in our immediate futures.
The daily activities of seaweed harvest are of the gutsy gritty romance that characterizes many of Maine’s industries. Several hours before the lowest tide of the month, my friend and I headed down to the barn where the seaweed and wetsuits were hung to dry. My pal and I struggled into our wetsuits as if the suits were actually exercise accoutrements designed to help us achieve and sustain effortful contorted positions. Half an hour later, after accomplishing ten chores in as many minutes, Micah came along and slipped into his suit like an easy second skin over rearrangable limbs.
We piled more equipment into the boat, waded in, and pushed off, the spray upon my glasses offering an impressionist’s view of the sea and sky. After another half hour, we arrived at several exposed ledges that Micah identified as prime seaweed territory. With a serrated knife in my right hand and in my left the rope to an inner tube with a harvesting basket stuffed in it and floating upon the curl, I threw myself overboard into four feet of sucking tides and slippery seaweed-covered rock.
We were after Digitata, the many-fingered kelp, and all the while the spidery Alaria fronds curled raggedly around our waists and thighs as the tides tried their damnedest to swallow me or at least laugh insanely as my tiny human attempt to balance upon two legs. To harvest the Digitata required that I reach into water up to my shoulder and grasp the stipe with an inarticulate gloved hand. The stipe was often as thick around as I could grasp, and without allowing the chaos to interfere with my sawing, I’d cut through the meat of it in order to retrieve 2-4 inches of stipe and all of the frond. Micah had an eye for the amount he wanted to harvest in order to manage the patch sustainably. Just when I was starting to wonder whether I was in control of the bucket full of seaweed or the bucket was in control of me, Micah shouted for us to hoist ourselves back in the boat, a feat which I was able to execute inelegantly thanks only to the quantity of pull-ups required in the study of acrobatics.
This all occurred between 4:30 am and 7:30 am.
Let me be clear, I was inordinately thrilled by every single moment of the harvest and would encourage anyone looking for a foraging adventure to test her sea legs. Pay no mind to the sizable seal nosing at your toe.
Being the smallest of our threesome — I have since learned from a Vermont natural science museum that the smallest animals often don’t survive the winter simply because of mass — I went directly under the covers upon our return to the cabin on the flower-covered isle and shivered for the better part of two hours. When I woke, I ate an enormous quantity of bacon and eggs, feta and cucumbers, walnuts and dates, and squares of dark chocolate.
Around noon, we returned to the boat, which had been pushed in to us by the tide, and we spent the happy part of an hour hauling buckets of wet seaweed up to the barn. My friend and I used a little yellow cart, which I pushed and he pulled, and we’d delivery the slippery vegetables to barn, where Micah had designed several ingenious sets of pullies and racks and ropes to haul the seaweed from the bottom of the barn to the second story.
Seaweeds begin to exude alginates after an hour of so out of the water, and so I had the sensation of having my hands covered in mermaid sneezes as I hung the muppet-like plants on thin wooden sticks in their specially-constructed racks.
Processing plants — shucking corn, pruning garlic, stripping leaves from dried tulsi, pinching golden ground cherries from their papery lantern husks — is one of the most intimate times for human-plant and human-human bonding. The plants slither or crumble or shed all over you according to their natures, and we homo sapiens catch up on all the gossip since we last we met: what its like to find a date in rural New England, the after-hours shenanigans of the neighboring lobstermen, the best way to butcher a goat, farming versus foraging. The usual.
After hanging the Digitata to dry, I had another nap, and then in the late afternoon my comrade and I wandered the perimeter of the island, past a giant elderberry tree covered in soft flowers, over rocky inlets ridden with buoys and lobster crates washed ashore, past Rosa rugosa thickets heavy with green hips, through patches and patches of wild raspberries, and up into the arms of a giant old rowan tree covered in the droppings of a raccoon tucking in to the early raspberries.
Along the shore we gathered the bladderwrack, which lay like the pocketed hair of mermaids, sucked at by the rocks at the water’s edge. We bent amid the tumble of boulders to snip the seaweed and pile it into our buckets. Bladderwrack has an odd mineral butter aroma, strongly of the sea and also sort of animal-ish. Micah recommended that we start to dry the seaweed in the car on the way home, and then grind it, as it was best as an additive or condiment to dishes or smoothies.
So that’s what I did. First on the porch in the sun, then finished it off in my dehydrator. A coffee grinder did the job just fine. What a particular plant this is! Here are some things I’ve learned about it since.
ENERGETICS & USES
Fucus vesiculosis (the species name meaning “little vesicles,” for the sealed air pockets that float the stuff) is the Latin binomial for the brown seaweed bladderwrack, a form of kelp famous for its ability to stimulate sluggish thyroid function. High in a form of iodine which is the immediate precursor to the thyroid hormones T3 and T4, bladderwrack is also highly nutritive, demulcent, and stimulating to cellular metabolism. The specific indications for use of this sea vegetable medicinally include both energetic and constitutional pictures as well as discreet diagnoses.
+ Depeletion: Bladderwrack in dense in micronutrients besides iodine, including calcium, magnesium potassium, sodium, silicon, iron, vitamin D, many B-complex vitamins, as well as essential fatty acids. The powdered sea vegetable is useful in debility, poor digestion, post-surgery, convalescence, postpartum, and other situations where remineralization is necessary. Particularly indicated for lethargy, dry skin and membranes, constipation resulting from dryness, and slow cognitive and physical development in children.
+ Chronic and Systemic Inflammation: Hot baths, compresses, and oral supplementation with bladderwrack is often recommended in rheumatic conditions. Treatments have been documented to relieved sore and achy joints and muscles as well as stimulate cartilage growth.
+ Adrenal and Immune Function: Studies have shown bladderwrack to improve duration and quality of sleep, promote tissue healing, and support anti-viral activity. Fucoidan is a compound found in brown seaweeds which has been shown to interfere with all stages of viral attack as well as will proliferation of human cancer cells. Dr. Drum even points out that all human cells studied have receptors for Fucose, the end-group sugar on the Fucoidan compound.
+ Metabolic and Cardiovascular Function: Bladderwrack added into the diet delays hardening of the arteries, lowers chronically high blood pressure, and stimulates cellular metabolism — all conditions correlated with low thyroid function.
SAVORY MORNING OATS!
This is my chance to share my favorite breakfast recipe, an not-sweet oatmeal recipe that I prefer for its ability to sustain the body through cold and hard-working mornings.
INGREDIENTS
Steel-cut or rolled oats, soaked 2-24 hours, drained 1 tablespoon ground bladderwrack or other seaweed 1 shredded carrot 2 tablespoons sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, and/or walnuts 1-2 pats of butter or coconut oil 1-2 teaspoons fresh-ground black pepper Nutritional yeast or miso as desired
DIRECTIONS
+ Bring water for oats to a boil, adding an extra half-cup to account for seaweed addition. + Upon boil, add oats, ground bladderwrack, and nuts and seeds. + Reduce to a simmer until oats are tender, as desired + Remove from heat and add remaining ingredients. + Easy peasy!
SOURCES
Maude Grieve. Bladderwrack. A Modern Herbal. https://www.botanical.com/botanical/mgmh/b/bladde54.html
Ryan Drum. Sea Vegetables for Food and Medicine. http://www.ryandrum.com/seaxpan1.html
Herbal Riot. The Magickal Uses of Bladderwrack. http://herbalriot.tumblr.com/post/56686839194/the-magickal-uses-of-bladderwrack
I have grand dreams of a farm-to-clinic practice where the majority of the medicine made and distributed at the clinic is grown or ethically wildcrafted — right here. Every year my gardens feel like a tiny step toward that. It’s high season for medicine making, which includes pruning, picking, drying, tincturing, garbling, bagging, pressing. . . repeat. Doesn’t seem to me that there are many more pleasant ways to pass the time than keeping company with the bees and fragrant things. Check out some of what’s blooming now.
