Wayside Medicine E-Book

Julie Bruton-Seal

• Herausgeber: Merlin Unwin Books
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 383

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

Wayside Medicine is packed with practical information on the use of over 50 native plants as sources of herbal medicine. The countryside abounds with cures which really work and cost a fraction of over-the-counter commercial brands. Have the satisfaction of picking and making your own simple herbal medicine, which has worked for centuries. The authors of Wayside Medicine remind us of a cornucopia of nature's healing plants which have somehow been forgotten. Here are clear instructions from a renowned professional herbalist on how to make your own remedies: teas, oils, tinctures, poultices and creams. Stunning colour pictures accompany all the plants, as well as a comprehensive index matching health problems to the right herbal cure.

Leseprobe

Rowan berries

A spring harvest of primroses

WAYSIDE MEDICINE

Forgotten Plantsand how to use them

Primrose leaf and flower

JULIE BRUTON-SEALMATTHEW SEAL

Contents

Preface

Introduction

Harvesting from the wayside

Using your wayside harvest

Alexanders

Ash

Avens

Bistort

Black horehound

Blackthorn

Bugle

Butcher’s broom

Chicory

Cranesbill

Creeping jenny & yellow loosestrife

Daisy

Fleabane

Forget-me-not

Fumitory

Goldenrod

Greater celandine

Ground elder

Ground ivy

Gypsywort

Heather & bell heather

Herb robert

Hogweed

Lesser celandine

Mouse-ear hawkweed

Navelwort

Ox-eye daisy

Pine

Primrose & cowslip

Purple loosestrife

Rowan

Sanicle

Scabious

Sea buckthorn

Silverweed, tormentil & cinquefoil

Sowthistle

Speedwell

Sphagnum moss

Sweet chestnut

Thistle

Valerian

Violet

Walnut

Wild carrot

Wild strawberry

Woundwort

Notes to the text

Recommended reading

Resources

Index

The authors

To the plants and all our other teachers

Country people heretofore did often use [ground ivy, above] to tun it up with their drink.… But this Age forsakes all old things, though never so good, and embraceth all kind of novelties whatsoever; but the time will come, that the fopperies of the present time shall be slighted, and the true and honest prescriptions of the Ancients come in request again.

– William Coles (1656)*

Rather than dismissing items of plant lore as quaint reminders of a more ignorant past, they should be seen as clues to an earlier, far more comprehensive knowledge of the use of plants.

– Gabrielle Hatfield (1999)

* For all references and sources, see Notes to the Text, starting on p214

Preface

We wrote this book because we saw around us a wealth of plants growing abundantly, which have medicinal uses that people have largely forgotten. These plants were once valued and widely used, but over time fell out of fashion and were bypassed because of a focus on the herbs of commerce.

Many readers of our earlier book Hedgerow Medicine have noted our hint there that we had another 50 or more plants in mind for similar treatment. In Wayside Medicine we have made room for these and a few more, including cognate species in a single chapter – such as primrose and cowslip; silverweed, tormentil and cinquefoil – or family groups, eg cranesbills, speedwells and thistles.

This is in effect a sequel to Hedgerow Medicine, with a similar locale and rationale. It has the same layout, with its strong visual emphasis, and the same sequence of information. As the subtitle suggests, we focus on largely forgotten medicinal plants that grow by roads or paths in the countryside or in the city.

Wayside plant medicine may start for you with reading a book like this, but the aim is for you to go out and practise it. Even Mr Squeers, the almost-illiterate headmaster in Dickens’ Nicholas Nickleby, would agree. On Nicholas’ first day at school, Squeers says:

“When the boys knows this out of book, he goes and does it. Where’s the second boy?”

“Please, sir, he’s weeding the garden.”

“To be sure. So he is. B-O-T, bot, T-I-N, bottin, N-E-Y, bottiney, noun substantive, a knowledge of plants. When he has learned that bottiney means a knowledge of plants, he goes and knows ’em. That’s our method, Nickleby.

“Third boy, what’s a horse?”

And where do we ‘go and know’ for our practical lessons? To what the late Roger Deakin called the undiscovered country of the nearby. Waysides of old have become the road verges of today, and these everyday, nearby but overlooked ecosystems are significant wild plant communities.

Each chapter has an introductory section that puts the plant(s) into historical and botanical context, and its forgotten or traditional medicinal uses; the Use For section describes current medicinal applications; and a new final section, Modern Research, selects from published clinical work about the plant (mainly from the PubMed database). We dislike animal studies for several reasons but have included some as they can inspire further exploration.

The medicinal recipes have an important role. We subscribe to the advice of noted herbalist Christopher Hedley: Don’t buy a herbal book if it doesn’t have recipes! Making a medicine from it is the ultimate relationship with a plant, and we hope you will move from the armchair to the roadside, with due cautions noted, and try these recipes for yourself.

But, why ‘forgotten’ plants? Mostly these are plants that were once in the herbal pharmacopoeia but have been dropped as chemical medicines replaced them, and as the pharmacopoeias themselves shrank. Once out of the ‘official’ lists, plants are no longer commercially attractive and disappear from everyday use and familiarity.

Herbal knowledge has been declining since a peak in the mid-17th century, when John Parkinson included some 3,800 herbs in his great herbal. But we can do something about it. Contemporary American herbalist David Winston, writing in 2005, made a plea that we heartily endorse: One way of correcting this problem is the expansion of our pharmacopoeias by the inclusion of unused but effective indigenous and introduced species. There are hundreds of such herbs available that have long histories of usage by peoples who depended on these plants for their health and well being.

Winston offers about a hundred plants for an ‘American extra pharmacopoeia’. Indeed, several of them overlap with our choices (eg chicory, cow parsnip/hogweed, ground ivy, ox-eye daisy and purple loosestrife).

What are our rules for a plant’s inclusion in this book? We cover plants we have had experience of; local abundance on waysides (eg navelwort is common in the west but not otherwise in the UK); we wanted to include juniper and centaury but they are endangered in the wild, so we didn’t; ease of identification; being nonpoisonous (eg we explain at length how other Apiaceae species differ from hemlock); and above-ground parts rather than roots.

Harvest with respect is our belief, so don’t pick more than you need even where a row of hogweed stretches to the horizon along your roadside. It will be there tomorrow, unless the council mower happens to pass by.

Writing a book like this is a collaborative process, not only between ourselves as co-authors but also within a wider herbal community. Our heartfelt thanks go to: Julian Barker, Charlotte du Cann, Danny O’Rawe and Mark Watson for acting as expert sounding boards in our contents-selection process; to Julia Behrens, Alice Bettany, Andrew Chevallier, Nikki Darrell, Chris Gambatese, Barbara Griggs, Karin Haile, Simon Harrap, Glennie Kindred, 7Song, Cathy Skipper and Davina Wynne-Jones for herbal wisdom, freely shared; and to Christine Herbert for (as usual) reading every word and offering us acute comments – and letting us photograph or pick plants in her smallholding. We also thank the Forgotten Herbs Facebook group, and forager friends Mina Said-Allsopp, Robin Harford and Monica Wilde.

To Merlin Unwin, Karen McCall and Jo Potter of Merlin Unwin Books our renewed thanks for getting the carrot/stick ratio just right.

We are grateful to a number of institutions, including the Wellcome Library, the British Library and the Norfolk County Council library service. We especially thank our local bibliographic treasure-house, the John Innes Historical Collections and outreach curator Dr Sarah Wilmot.

We have acknowledged sources in the Notes to the Text, and thank copyright holders for permission to include extracts from their work. If we have overlooked or been unable to locate copyright owners we will gladly add details in a later edition. Needless to say, the opinions expressed here are our own, and we take responsibility for them.

Thanks also to Julie’s many patients who, wittingly or not, have contributed to this book. Don’t worry, you remain anonymous.

Finally, our respect to the plants themselves. We owe them everything, for, as John Ruskin wrote over 150 years ago:

All the wide world of vegetation blooms and buds for you; the thorn and the thistle which the earth casts forth as evil are to you the kindliest servants; no dying petal nor drooping tendril is so feeble as to have no help for you.

Julie Bruton-Seal & Matthew Seal Ashwellthorpe, Norfolk November 2016

Introduction

Jesus’ Parable of the Sower starts with the seeds that fall by the wayside – and the fowls came and devoured them up (Matthew 13.4). This wayside is hard and impenetrable, unsuitable ground for hand-spread seeds to germinate. In effect they were bird food.

The parable next has seeds falling on stony ground, which grew but scorched in the sun because they had no root. Seed scattered on thorny ground germinated but was choked by weeds. The seed on fertile ground flourished, and gave varying levels of fruit.

The parable explains different levels of faith. But what concerns us here is an undertone: in the battle of agriculture and nature, cultivated crops must win against weeds, or we all die. ‘Falling by the wayside’ is a metaphor for losing out, giving up and being forgotten, as morally inferior. Waysides are marginal land, between public road and private farmland, lacking the status and value of either.

Yet European and other pre-industrial waysides were once vibrant spaces, tracks where multitudes of people and livestock moved between fields and villages, while ancient droveways saw cattle led hundreds of miles to distant urban markets. Carts and carriages used animal power, and as draught horses or cows grazed the wayside vegetation they also fertilised it. It was a wayside golden age for wild flowers where meadows met mud tracks, and grass was kept short.

Fast forward to today, and livestock is moved by truck, people drive rather than walk, fields are over-fertilised, roads are metalled over, mass levels of traffic emit nitrous oxide pollutants, and hedges and roadsides are cut by mowers owned by councils or landowners. The wayside wild plants are often mown in early summer, when all but spring plants have yet to complete their life cycle, and the sward is left uncollected, leading to excess nitrogenous content in the soil. This favours nitrogen-loving summer species like hogweed (cow parsnip), nettle and bramble, which choke other plants – thorny ground indeed.

The plant conservation charity Plantlife estimates that 97% of British meadows have gone since the 1930s. No wonder that the few remaining animal-based rural economies in places like parts of Romania, Sardinia, Poland or Amish lands in Pennsylvania are celebrated, a reminder of the lost wealth of ancient meadowlands and waysides.

Yet all is not a forgotten memory. Plantlife estimates that about 700 species of wild plants still grow on Britain’s road verges, some 45% of the nation’s flora. And there are nearly 320,000 miles (500,000 km) of these verges. They are effectively the residual habitat of lost meadows, and they are already managed. And sometimes protected: we live near Wood Lane Road-verge Meadow, Long Stratton, home of the endangered sulphur clover.

Taking ‘road-verge’ as the modern equivalent of ‘way-side’ opens everything up. Why not locate and use some of these abundant, free, easily identified (in most cases) and wiry wild wayside plants for our own medicine? This book invites you to step off the ‘beaten track’ and offers you the means to do so, including the legalities and practicalities of collecting wayside plants for medicinal use.

Harvesting from the wayside

Harvesting wild plants for food or medicine is a great pleasure, and healing in its own right. We all need the company of plants and wild places, whether a wayside, an old wood, a remote moor or seashore or even our own garden. Gathering herbs for free is the beginning of a valuable and therapeutic relationship with the wild. Here are a few basic guidelines to get started.

Why pay others to frolic in the luscious gardens of Earth, picking flowers and enjoying themselves making herbal products? You can do all that frolicking, immersing yourself in wondrous herbal beauty, and uplifting your mind and spirit. Making your own herbal medicine both enhances your happiness and boosts your immune system.

– Green (2000)

Herbs are to be gathered when they are fullest of juice which is before they run up to seed; and if you gather them in a hot sunshine, they will not be so subject to putrifie: the best way to dry them is in the Sun … Let Flowers be gathered when they are in their prime, in a sunshine day, and dried in the Sun. Let the Seeds be perfectly ripe before they be gathered. Let them be kept in a dry place; for any moisture, though it be but a moist air, corrupts them.

– Culpeper (1653)

The process of gathering wild herbs for medicine – our own term for this is medicinal foraging – is straightforward. You identify the right plant and pick it at the right time, then make a simple home medicine. The benefits are aptly expressed by James Green (quote alongside), and the desiderata have not changed in the 350-plus years since Nicholas Culpeper gave his advice (below left).

Identification

Perhaps the most important thing is to ensure you have the right plant. A good field guide is essential – we like Harrap’s Wild Flowers by Simon Harrap – and there are numerous phone apps for wild plants. A herb mentor is invaluable: many herbalists offer herb walks. Check our Resources page (220) to contact practitioners in your area.

For distribution maps and plant identification, the Botanical Society of the British Isles has a regularly updated site: see www.bsbi.org. In America the USDA maps both wild plants and crops (www.usda.gov).

Where to collect

Choose a place where the plant you are harvesting is abundant and vibrant. Woods, fields and minor roads are best, though some of our plants are also found in the city. Avoiding heavy traffic is safer for you and your lungs, and plants growing in quiet places are less polluted. Park carefully and be aware of traffic at all times.

Remember that hedgerows next to fields may receive crop sprays and waysides may be sprayed, as well as being mown (often just when you are ready to collect).

When to collect

Harvest herbs when they are at their lushest. Pick on a dry day, after any morning dew has burned off. For aromatic plants the sun’s energy is vital, so wait for a hot day and pick while the sun is high, ideally just before noon.

Harvest only what you need and will use; leave some of the plant so it will grow back. When picking above-ground parts of a plant, only take the top half to two-thirds. Never harvest if a plant is the only one in a particular area.

Collecting equipment

Very basic: think carrier bags or a basket, and perhaps gloves, hat, scissors or secateurs. Be sensible: blackthorn and sea buckthorn call for more protection than veronica. Be aware that carrying a knife with a blade of more than 75mm long may be a legal offence. If you are harvesting roots take a small shovel or digging fork.

A quiet wooded lane in Oxfordshire, September

The passing pleasure afforded to the wayfarer by the beauty of these bright and lowly decorators of our lanes and fields … Add to that their manifold uses – and stand humbly in reverence before the Wayside Flower.

– anon (2008)

We have included a few roots in our recipes. It is important not to over-harvest these, as you are usually killing the plant (exceptions include ground elder). The roots we have selected are widespread and often classed as weeds.

Collecting for sale

This book describes medicinal foraging for personal use rather than collecting for sale, either directly as in fungi to a restaurant or for making medicines or cosmetics to sell. Other laws and regulations apply when selling is involved, including health and safety approval of your equipment.

We do however like the story of Dr Christopher (1909–83), the American naturopath and herbalist, who in the lean post-war years worked as a gardener in the mornings. He kept the ‘weeds’ he had unearthed, notably plantain, took them home and made medicine from them. Then he sold this back to his clients!

Legal guidance

Custom in the form of common law still protects the right to wild-gather the ‘four Fs’ of fruit, foliage, fungi and flowers, for personal use and not resale. Roots are somewhat different, as the law recognises: it’s one thing to smell a neighbour’s rose, another to pick its petals and yet another to dig it up without permission.

In practical terms you should seek an owner’s permission before unearthing roots anywhere outside your own garden, but picking above-ground parts of plants anywhere will generally be condoned if done discreetly and moderately. There are seldom prosecutions for medicinal harvesting.

Note that private land should be marked with a notice board, and you can theoretically be charged with trespass if you ignore such a notice. Waysides may be owned privately or be public land. Many nature reserves prohibit any picking.

Rare plants are protected by the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, and a list of these plants is regularly updated. No such plants are included in this book, and we would not expect to make medicine from an endangered species.

Note that legislation differs in Scotland and Scandinavian countries, with more ‘right to roam’ embedded in law than in England and Wales. For the text of relevant legislation, see www.legislation.gov.uk.

Storing your plants

It’s a good idea to make your medicines on the same day as you pick them, if you can. And the best way to store your plants is in the medicinal form you have made, whether preserving in alcohol or glycerine, honey, vinegar, ghee, as tea or ice cubes, and so on, as outlined in the next section.

Don’t forget to label any container with the plant’s name, date and place collected.

Using your wayside harvest

Herbs can be used in many different ways. Simplest and most ancient is nibbling the fresh plant, crushing the leaves to apply them as a poultice or perhaps boiling up some water to make a tea. Many of the plants discussed in this book are foods as well as medicines, and incorporating them seasonally in your diet is a tasty and enjoyable way to improve your health.

But because fresh herbs aren’t available year round or may not grow right on your doorstep, you may want to preserve them for later use. Follow these guidelines.

Equipment needed

You don’t need any special equipment for making your own foraged medicines. You probably already have most of what you need.

Kitchen basics like a teapot, measuring jugs, saucepans and a blender are all useful, as are jam-making supplies such as a jelly bag and jam jars. A mortar and pestle are handy but not essential. You’ll also need jars, bottles and labels for these.

There is a list of suppliers at the end of the book to help you source any supplies or ingredients you may need (see p220).

It is a good idea to have a notebook to write down your experiences, so you’ll have a record for yourself and can repeat successes. Who knows, it could become a family heirloom like the stillroom books of old!

Drying herbs

The simplest way to preserve a plant is to dry it, and then use the dried part as a tea (infusion or decoction: see overleaf). Dried plant material can also go into tinctures, infused oils and other preparations, though these are often made directly from fresh plants.

To dry herbs, tie them in small bundles and hang these from the rafters or a laundry airer, or spread the herbs on a sheet of brown paper or a screen. (Avoid using newspaper as the inks contain toxic chemicals.)

Generally, plants are best dried out of the sun. An airing or warming cupboard works well, particularly in damp weather.

You can easily make your own drying screen by stapling some mosquito netting or other open-weave fabric to a wooden frame. This is ideal, as the air can circulate around the plant, and yet you won’t lose any small flowers or leaves through the mesh.

A dehydrator set on a low temperature setting is perfect for drying herbs as well as summer fruit.

Storing dried herbs

Once the plant is crisply dry, you can discard any larger stalks. Whole leaves and flowers will keep best, but if they are large you may want to crumble them so they take up less space. They will be easier to measure for teas etc if they are crumbled before use.

The 'Virtues' of a herb are its strengths and qualities; its inner potency, expressions of its vital spirit and of the way it is in the world. The way a herb is in the world will inform it of the way to be in your body. We prefer this term to the more modern 'uses'. Herbs do not have uses. They have themselves and their own purposes.

– Hedley & Shaw (2016)

Dried herbs can be stored in brown paper bags or in airtight containers such as sweet jars or plastic tubs, in a cool place. If your container is made of clear glass or other transparent material, keep it in the dark as light will fade leaves and flowers quite quickly.

Dried herbs will usually keep for a year, until you can replace them with a fresh harvest. Roots and bark keep longer than leaves and flowers.

In looking at medicine-making we start with the familiar teas and tinctures, then move on to often-forgotten but still valuable methods.

Teas: infusions and decoctions

The simplest way to make a plant extract is with hot water. Use fresh or dried herbs. An infusion, where hot water is poured over the herb and left to steep for several minutes, is the usual method for a tea of leaves and flowers.

A decoction, where the herb is simmered or boiled in water for some time, is best for roots and bark. Decoctions stored in sterile bottles will keep for a year or more if unopened.

Infusions and decoctions can also be used as mouthwashes, gargles, eyebaths, fomentations and douches.

Tinctures

While the term tincture can refer to any liquid extract of a plant, what is usually meant is an alcohol and water extract. Many plant constituents dissolve more easily in a mixture of alcohol and water than in pure water. There is the added advantage of the alcohol being a preservative, allowing the extract to be stored for several years.

The alcohol content of the finished extract needs to be at least 20% to adequately preserve it. Most commercially produced tinctures have a minimum alcohol content of 25%. A higher concentration is needed to extract more resinous substances, such as pine resin.

For making your own tinctures, vodka is preferred as it has no flavour of its own, and allows the taste of the herbs to come through. Whisky, brandy or rum work quite well too. Wine can be used, especially for dried herbs, but will not have as long a shelf life because of its lower alcohol content.

To make a tincture, you simply fill a jar with the herb and top up with alcohol, or you can put the whole lot in the blender first. The mixture is then kept out of the light for anything from a day to a month to infuse before being strained and bottled. The extraction is ready when the plant material has lost most of its colour.

Tinctures are convenient to store and to take. We find amber or blue glass jars best for keeping, although clear bottles will let you enjoy the colours of your tinctures. Store them in a cool place. Kept properly, most tinctures have a shelf life of around five years. They are rapidly absorbed into the bloodstream, and alcohol makes the herbal preparation more heating and dispersing in its effect.

Wines and beers

Many herbs can be brewed into wines and beers, which will retain the medicinal virtues of the plants. Elderberry wine and nettle beer are traditional, but don’t forget that ordinary beer is brewed with hops, a medicinal plant.

Other fermentations

There are other fermentations that use a combination of yeasts and bacteria. Sourdough bread is one example, but more relevant here are drinks such as kefir and kombucha. The starter grains are usually available on eBay.

There are two kinds of kefir, one made with milk and one made with sugar and water. We find the latter a really useful drink that can be flavoured with various herbs, such as in our sea buckthorn recipe on p160.

Glycerites

Vegetable glycerine (glycerol) is extracted from vegetable oil, and is a sweet, syrupy substance. It is particularly good in making medicines for children, and for soothing preparations intended for the throat and digestive tract, or coughs. A glycerite will keep well as long as the concentration of glycerine is at least 50% to 60% in the finished product.

Glycerine does not extract most plant constituents as well as alcohol does, but preserves flavours and colours better, and is particularly good for flowers. Glycerites are made the same way as tinctures, except the jar is kept in the sun or in a warm place to infuse.

Many herbalists like to add a small amount of alcohol to their glycerites to help preserve them, and to make them less sweet.

Glycerine is a good preservative for fresh plant juices, in which half fresh plant juice and half glycerine are mixed, as it keeps the juice green and in suspension better than alcohol. This preparation is called a succus.

Gemmotherapy extracts

Gemmotherapy is nothing to do with gem stones but rather uses the buds, shoots and sometimes root tips of trees and shrubs. The idea is that the embryonic tissue in the growing tips contains all the information of the whole plant, as well as various hormones not present elsewhere in the plant.

Buds are collected when they are plump but still firm, just before they open. Shoots are picked green, when they emerge from the dormant twigs. Because picking off the growth tip of a tree branch stops that part producing leaves, it needs to be done respectfully, not taking too many from any one plant.

For extracting the chemistry of buds and shoots, a mixture of equal parts water, alcohol and glycerine has been found most effective. If you are using vodka or another spirit that is 50% alcohol (or more usually 40% alcohol and 60% water), simply use two parts alcohol to one part glycerine.

We have found this an effective mixture for roots and leaves too, and often prefer it to making a standard tincture or glycerite.

Vinegars

Another way to extract and preserve plant material is to use vinegar. Some plant constituents will extract better in an acidic medium, making vinegar the perfect choice.

Herbal vinegars are often made from pleasant-tasting herbs, and used in salad dressings and for cooking. They are also a good addition to the bath or for rinsing hair, as the acetic acid of the vinegar helps restore the natural protective acid pH of the body’s exterior. Cider vinegar is a remedy for colds and other viruses, so it is a good solvent for herbal medicines made for these conditions.

Herbal honeys

Honey has natural antibiotic and antiseptic properties, making it an excellent vehicle for medicines to fight infection. It can be applied topically to wounds, burns and leg ulcers. Local honeys can help prevent hayfever attacks.

Honey is naturally sweet, making it palatable for medicines for children. It is also particularly suited to medicines for the throat and respiratory system as it is soothing and also clears congestion. Herb-infused honeys are made the same way as glycerites.

Oxymels

An oxymel is a preparation of honey and vinegar. Oxymels were once popular as cordials, both in Middle Eastern and European herbal traditions. They are particularly good for cold and flu remedies. Honey can be added to a herb-infused vinegar, or an infused honey can be used as well.

Electuaries

These are basically herbal pastes. They are often made by stirring powdered dried herbs into honey or glycerine, but also by grinding up herbs, seeds and dried fruit together. Electuaries are good as children’s remedies, soothe the digestive tract and can be made into tasty medicine balls or truffles.

Syrups

Syrups are made by boiling the herb with sugar and water. The sugar acts as a preservative, and can help extract the plant material. Syrups generally keep well, especially the thicker ones containing more sugar, as long as they are stored in sterilised bottles.

They are particularly suitable for children because of their sweet taste, and are generally soothing.

Herbal sweets

While we are not recommending large amounts of sugar as being healthy, herbal sweets such as coltsfoot rock and peppermints are a traditional way of taking herbs in a pleasurable way.

Plant essences

Plant essences, usually flower essences, differ from other herbal preparations in that they only contain the vibrational energy of the plant, and none of the plant chemistry. They have the advantage of being potent in small doses. Julie nearly always dispenses flower essences for her patients alongside other herbal preparations as they help the herbs do their job.

To make an essence, the flowers or other plant parts are usually put in water in a glass bowl and left to infuse in the sun for a couple of hours, as in the instructions for our forget-me-not essence on p75. This essence is then preserved with brandy, and diluted for use.

Distilling herbs

While distilling essential oils from plants requires large plant quantities, it is simple to distil your own herbal waters or hydrolats.

Simply use a stockpot or other large saucepan with a domed lid that can be put on upside-down. One with a glass lid is best, as you can see what’s going on inside. Put a collecting bowl in your saucepan under the centre of the lid, raised on a brick or upturned bowl above the water around it, which contains the plants. Heat the pot so that the water starts to become steam; this collects inside the lid and drips down into your collecting bowl. Ice cubes (or frozen peas!) on the upturned lid speed up the condensation. Keep on low heat until your collecting bowl is nearly full. Pour the distilled herbal water carefully into sterile bottles. There are many videos on YouTube showing you how to do this.

If you want to make larger quantities, we recommend the traditional hand-made copper alembics still being produced in Portugal. See www.al-ambiq.com

Distilled plant waters keep quite well, but do not have any preservatives, so are often dispensed in spray bottles to keep them from contamination. They are good as face washes and eyebaths, and can be taken internally. They are gentler than tinctures, but effective.

Infused oils

Oil is mostly used to extract plants for external use on the skin, but infused oils can equally well be taken internally. Like vinegars, they are good in salad dressings and in cooking.

We prefer extra virgin olive oil as a base, as it does not go rancid as many polyunsaturated oils do. Other oils, such as coconut and sesame, may be chosen because of their individual characteristics.

Infused oils are also known as macerated oils, and should not be confused with essential oils, which are aromatic oils isolated by distilling the plant material.

Ointments or salves

Ointments or salves are rubbed onto the skin. The simplest ointments are made by adding beeswax to an infused oil and heating until the beeswax has melted. The amount of wax needed will vary, depending on the climate or temperature in which it will be used, with more wax needed in hotter climates or weather.

Ointments made this way have a very good shelf life. They absorb well, while providing a protective layer on top of the skin.

Ointments can also be made with animal fats or hard plant fats such as cocoa butter, and with plant waxes such as candelilla.

Butters and ghees

Butter can be used instead of oil to extract herbs, and, once clarified by simmering, it keeps well without refrigeration, making a simple ointment. Clarified butter is a staple in Indian cooking and medicine, where it is called ghee. It is soothing on the skin and absorbs well, plumping up the skin. Herbal butters and ghees can also be used as food.

Skin creams

Creams are a mixture of a water-based preparation with an oil-based one, to make an emulsion. Creams are absorbed into the skin more rapidly than ointments, but have the disadvantages of being more difficult to make and of not keeping as well.

Creams are best refrigerated, and essential oils can be added to help preserve them. Creams are better than ointments for use on hot skin conditions, as they are more cooling.

Poultices

The simplest poultice is mashed fresh herb put onto the skin, as when you crush a plantain leaf and apply it to a wasp sting. Poultices can be made from fresh herb juice mixed with slippery elm powder or simply flour, or from dried herb moistened with hot water or vinegar.

Change the poultice every few hours and keep it in place with a bandage or sticking plaster.

Fomentations or compresses

A fomentation or compress is an infusion or a decoction applied externally. Simply soak a flannel or bandage in the warm or cold liquid, and apply. Hot fomentations are used to disperse and clear, and are good for conditions as varied as backache, joint pain, boils and acne. Note that hot fomentations need to be refreshed frequently once they cool down.

Cold fomentations can be used for cases of inflammation or for headaches. Alternating hot and cold fomentations works well for sprains and other injuries.

Embrocations or liniments

Embrocations or liniments are used in massage, with the herbs preserved in an oil or alcohol base, or a mixture of the two. Absorbed quickly through the skin, they can readily relieve muscle tension, pain and inflammation, and speed the healing of injuries.

Baths

Herbs can be added conveniently to bathwater by tying a sock or cloth full of dried or fresh herb to the hot tap as you run the bath, or by adding a few cups of an infusion or decoction. Herbal vinegars, tinctures and oils can be added to bath water, as can a few drops of essential oil.

Besides full baths, hand and foot baths are very refreshing, as are sitz or hip baths where only your bottom is in the water.

Part of the therapeutic effect of any of these baths is the fact that they make you stop and be still, something most of us do not do often enough.

Douches

Once they have cooled, herbal infusions or decoctions can be used as douches for vaginal infections or inflammation.

AlexandersSmyrnium olusatrum

Alexanders has made the switch from wild-gathered plant to cultivated and back to wild, and was both food and medicine in classical and medieval times. It lost out to celery as a commercial salad crop from the 16th century, but is now making a comeback as a winter foraged food and has intriguing possibilities in colon cancer research.

Apiaceae (Umbelliferae) Carrot family

Description: Tall biennial (to 1.5m or 5ft), with hairless, scented stems; leaves dark green, glossy, three-lobed; flowers yellow-white; seeds dark black ovals. Dies back in summer.

Habitat: Near the sea, by cliff and roadsides, hedgerows, forming colonies; spreading inland slowly.

Distribution: Mediterranean origin, naturalised throughout Western and Central Europe; east and southern coasts of Britain and Ireland, southern England.

Related species: Many Apiaceae are medicinal, including angelica, celery, dill, fennel and lovage. Be careful of your identification as there are several poisonous species in this family.

Parts used: All parts, including the seeds, available from autumn to spring; produces early foliage in winter.

Geoffrey Grigson (1958) says alexanders is ‘happiest and most frequent by the sea’. He’s right, and sturdy stands of this vigorous and stately naturalised umbellifer abound by eastern and southern coasts of Britain and Ireland.

It also seems to be pressing inland in our part of East Anglia, thriving by roadsides at least 55km (35 miles) from the Norfolk coast, perhaps responding favourably to regular winter salting of the roads.

We welcome its advance, and Julie has fond memories of picking winter alexander shoots for salad on the school run to Wroxham.

The plant’s origin and names are clearly Mediterranean. Archaeological finds suggest it was being cultivated in the eastern Mediterranean in the Iron Age (c.1300–700 BC). Its roots and shoots had become a popular, if pungent, potherb and vegetable by the time of the reign of Alexander the Great in the fourth century BC.

The English name alexanders could be for the emperor, or indeed for the port in Egypt that he founded and which bore his name. The plant’s Greek name hipposelinon means ‘horse parsley or celery’, which was still being used by John Parkinson in the early 17th century. In this context horse means large, according to William Salmon’s herbal of 1710.

Columella, the Roman agricultural writer (AD 4– 70), knew alexanders as ‘myrrh of Achaea’, the then current Latin name for Greece. The myrrh reference has followed the plant in its generic name Smyrnium. Some people do find the taste and scent to be myrrh-like, though others get more lovage in it; an old name is black lovage.

Alexanders had an early shift from wild-gathering to cultivation, and from Roman times to the 16th century or so it was more known as a food than a medicine. Its species name olusatrum derives from olus for potherb and atrum for black, the colour of the large seeds, which were ground as a condiment.

As both a food and medicine alexanders became a widely used monastic plant in medieval times. Many scattered inland sightings of it in Britain can be related to sites of former monastic houses. By the dissolution in the 1530s and 1540s, wild celery was being cultivated and superseded alexanders and lovage in popularity.

Currently alexanders is becoming popular again with foragers, for its fresh greens in winter and spicy seeds. We like it as a condiment to use as pepper. We actually don’t find it ‘peppery’ but more pungent, sour, oily and nutty.

Use alexanders for …

Alexanders was classified in classic Galenic terms as ‘hot and dry in the third degree’, and its actions were accordingly forceful. It was found to work strongly on the urinary and digestive systems, especially the seeds.

Parkinson (1629) states that The seede is more used physically than the roote, or any other parte. Salmon (1710) writes that alexanders effectually provokes Urine, helps the Strangury, and prevails against Gravel and Tartarous Matter in Reins and Bladder.

In modern terms, Salmon was saying that alexanders was a diuretic, clearing obstructions in the urinary system, including stones in the kidneys and bladder.

Dioscorides, in the 1st century AD, knew alexanders as an emmenagogue, a herb that promoted menstruation. Salmon noted that the plant ‘powerfully provokes the Terms’; it also ‘expels the Birth’, ie afterbirth. That is, it is a powerful uterine tonic, to be treated with caution in pregnancy.

The Monks were good Chemists, & invented many good Receipts: which they imparted to their Penitents: & so are handed downe to their great-grandchildren, a great many varieties.

– Aubrey, c.1660s

[The expressed juice mixed with port or wine] … is a Specifick against Stone and Gravel, eases the Strangury and brings away Urine or Matter obstructing the Urinary passages, when almost all other things fail.

– Salmon (1710)

Salmon adds that a cataplasm of the bruised leaves, applied hot to the afflicted part, will dry up old sores and foetid ulcers, and either discusses [breaks up] or maturates Scrophulous [tubercular] Tumors.

Alexanders was included in the first London Pharmacopoeia (1618), meaning it was an ‘official’ herb of the apothecaries. But by the time Salmon prepared his herbal nearly a century later it had been dropped. It was sliding out of use in both medicine and cookery, though there are records of alexanders root being sold to the public in Covent Garden market later in the 18th century.

Of course it does not follow that because alexanders has gone out of fashion it is no longer useful as food and a wayside medicine. The virtues the old herbalists championed remain valid, even if less used these days, and furthermore clinical experimentation is opening up some new possibilities.

Alexanders seedheads by the shore, north Norfolk, autumn

Modern research

One area of recent interest is alexanders essential oil. Italian researchers found (2014) that the oil from the flowers induces apoptosis, or cell death, in human colon carcinoma cells. The oil has high quantities of isofuranodiene, a known anti-cancer agent.

Another intriguing finding (2012) is that this oil is strongly effective against candida, a fungal infection.

There is also a suggestion (2008) that alexanders has a comparable biomedical action to zedoary (Curcuma wenyujin), a type of Chinese ginger and source of a traditional remedy called Ezhu.

Ezhu is prescribed in China as an essential oil for liver, gastric, lung and cervical cancer, and its active principle, furanodiene, is the same. Perhaps alexanders could be a Western Ezhu in waiting?

Its certain aromatic or pungent flavour … would be too strong for modern tastes.

– Pratt (1866)

… although it be a little bitter, yet it is both wholsome, and pleasing to a great many, by reason of the aromaticall or spicie taste, warming and comforting the stomack, and helping it digest the many waterish and flegmaticke meates [that] are in those times [winter and spring] much eaten.

– Parkinson (1629)

Harvesting alexanders

The green herb is best harvested in winter or very early spring, before the stalks become stringy. The seeds can be harvested once they turn black, and the stems are no longer green.

A tisane for the stomak

The tisane (tea) recipe, taken from the Syon Abbey Herbal of 1517, may be the first English reference to alexanders as a medicinal plant (preceding the usually referenced one in William Turner’s Herball of 1562). This quartet of four Apiaceae roots as a hot tea makes for a powerful stimulant to a sluggish stomach.

Take rotis [roots] of Fenell, Alisaundre [alexanders], Parsyly and Smalach [celery], a godehandfull, well and clen, washen and wel stanpid [crushed] in a morter & seth [boil] hem in a pottel [pot] of water to the half and do therto a littil hony and clens it and drink it at even and at moroun [morning] , ix sponfull at oones [at one go].

Alexanders black butter sauce

Collect the seeds in the autumn when they are ripe. Grind them in an electric spice mill or coffee grinder. They are best freshly ground in small quantities as needed, sieving to remove any larger chunks as these can be quite chewy.

Melt 2 tablespoons butter with 1 tablespoon olive oil. Add 2 cloves garlic, crushed. Cook gently for a few minutes, then add 2 to 3 teaspoons ground alexanders seeds, and heat through.

Serve stirred into pasta, or as a dipping sauce for bread. Quite heady!

Root tisane

• sluggish digestion

• gas and griping pains

• urinary gravel

• urinary infections

Alexanders black butter sauce

• stimulates digestion

• urinary gravel

Caution Avoid alexanders seed during pregnancy.

Ash trees in the Yorkshire Dales, May

AshFraxinus excelsior

Ash has been a common British tree since Neolithic times, known as both a highly adaptable wood with a huge range of uses and as a folk medicine. It is currently in the news because it is endangered by ash dieback, a fungal disease.

Oleaceae Olive family

Description: Grows to 30m (100ft) tall, erect, deciduous; grey bark, knobbly brown and yellow flowers, large black conical buds, bright green pinnate leaves with 7–13 oval leaflets.

Habitat: Widespread, though prefers lowland and limestone; most abundant in eastern/southern Britain.

Distribution: Native to Northern Europe, Central and East Asia; sometimes forms woods, but also prominent in mixed woods, copses and hedgerows. Found in eastern Canada and north-eastern US.

Related species:F. americana (white ash); F. angustifolia (narrow-leaved ash); F. chinensis ssp. rhynchophylla (Chinese ash); F. ornus (manna ash).

Parts used: Bark, leaves, buds, fruit and seeds [keys], sap.

Britain recognised officially in 2012 that its 126 million or so Fraxinus excelsior (European ash) trees were under attack by ash dieback, an almost incurable fungal condition arriving in ash trees imported from mainland Europe. The dieback manifests in the tree crowns and leaf mass, and affects saplings more readily than mature trees. Estimates in late 2015 put up to 90% of British ash trees at serious risk.

Identified first as Chalara fraxinea, ash dieback has been subject to intensive research, which has moved its name on twice – it is now known as Hymenoscyphus fraxineus. The early genome research into the fungus was carried out in the wood at the back of our house in Norfolk – and our village has the unintentionally ironic name of Ashwellthorpe.

Another threat to ash trees is the emerald ash borer, a small destructive beetle endemic to North America and now rampaging through Russia, though not found yet in the UK. It destroys a full-grown ash in three years, while Hymenoscyphus might take five or ten.

In cash terms, estimates say ash wood adds £100 million annually to Britain's economy; while ecologists remind us that ash provides a home for some 45 living species.

Here comes Betty and biochar!

The research community is not giving up on ash just yet.

In April 2016 a report by a joint British and Scandinavian team said a 200-year-old Ashwellthorpe ash tree nicknamed ‘Betty’ gave cause for hope.

’Betty’ had three genetic markers for resisting dieback, even while living next to infected trees. The team think other British ashes share Betty’s tolerance, and selective breeding may lead to resistant ash woodlands one day.

Another hopeful sign is biochar. Biochar is fine-grained charcoal made from burnt biomass, and is well known to gardeners and growers.