HANDCRAFTED HERBALISM - Chestnut School of Herbal Medicine

HANDCRAFTED HERBALISM: MINI-COURSE
Introduction to Foraging
and Wildcrafting
Photographs and text by Juliet Blankespoor
Picking red clover (Trifolium pratense)
Chestnut School of
Herbal Medicine
www.ChestnutHerbs.com
HANDCRAFTED HERBALISM: MINI-COURSE
I
love witnessing the joy and pride that emanates from anyone digging an edible root or harvesting
wild edible greens for the first time. It may seem like these are simple tasks to master, but learning
how to forage is a major game changer for any human. These skills are our birthright, but sadly most
of us didn’t grow up learning them. Gathering medicine and food from the wild connects us to the
natural world, our ancestral heritage, and our wild animal selves. Being involved in our sustenance
and healing is boldly empowering and ties us into an ancient appreciation of simple living and the
changing of the seasons.
By gathering our own medicines carefully and conscientiously, we can be assured that our medicines
are fresh, of high quality, and harvested in a sustainable fashion.
When we are more personally involved with our herbal medicines (by growing or gathering), we also
greatly reduce the environmental impact of packaging and transportation.
Harvesting chickweed's tender tops (Stellaria media)
HANDCRAFTED HERBALISM: MINI-COURSE
Foraging Guidelines
FORAGING GUIDELINE 1: Be absolutely
positive of your identification before you
harvest and ingest any wild food or medicine.
It is common sense that you should know what
you are harvesting. If in doubt, do not gather!
Consult with local herbalists, botanists, and field
guides. Be especially careful with plants in families that contain deadly poisonous members, such
as the carrot (Apiaceae) and buttercup (Ranunculaceae) families. Court a plant throughout the
seasons and positively identify it at least three
times before you make your move!
If you’re interested in learning more about plant
identification, we recommend taking a class in
your area on the local flora. These are typically
offered through community centers, community
colleges, adult education and herbal schools.
Your local extension agent or Master Gardeners
organization may be another resource to turn to.
Here are some resources for helping with plant
identification:
Harvesting burdock (Arctium minus)
“Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with
your feet.”
­—Thich Nhat Hanh
Here’s a good overview on scientific names,
including their history, synonyms and common
names for some plant families.
List of plant identification websites
USDA Plant Database You can search by
common name or scientific name for plants. The
database shows photos of the plant, its current
range and sometimes illustrations.
Illustrated glossary of vegetative terms (leaves)
Go Botany: Simple Plant Key for New England
The Chestnut School’s link page has some great
resources on the subject, listed under botany and
wild foods.
Illustrated glossary of floral terms
Facebook group for help identifying plants
Forty-five-minute video: Botany in a Day Tutorial
with Thomas J. Elpel
Finally, I highly recommend getting to know the
most poisonous plants in your area. It’s beyond
the scope of the class to provide a comprehensive
list of poisonous plants, but here are a few you’ll
want to learn because they are lethal.
HANDCRAFTED HERBALISM: MINI-COURSE
Harvesting hawthorn (Crataegus sp.) blooms
SOME POISONOUS PLANTS TO LEARN
BEFORE YOU START FORAGING
Water hemlock (Cicuta maculata)
Poison hemlock (Conium maculatum)
Oleander (Nerium oleander) (if you live in a
warm climate)
Foxglove, or digitalis (Digitalis purpurea) (looks
a lot like comfrey or mullein)
This is not a comprehensive list of poisonous
plants. The list will vary depending on your
bioregion. Consult local field guides or extension
offices.
Here’s a Really Silly Video Driving the Point
Home!
FORAGING GUIDELINE 2: Harvest in
clean locations. Avoid harvesting near roads,
foundations of buildings, electric lines, railroads, floodplains of polluted rivers and fields
that may be sprayed with herbicide.
Plants can absorb and bioaccumulate toxins,
including heavy metals, which means that
contaminated plants can have higher levels of
toxins than the surrounding soil. Always harvest
at least 30 feet from the road (and only harvest
near smaller, less-traveled byways) and make
sure you are not harvesting in an area with environmental toxicity or herbicides and pesticides.
Even hay fields that appear to be untended can be
sprayed with herbicides. Avoid the foundations
of buildings, because these are often sprayed with
pesticides and may be contaminated with lead
paint scrapings (near older homes). Railroads
and power lines are typically sprayed heavily with
herbicides. If a river is polluted, then the floodplain and the plants growing in it are likely to be
polluted as well.
If you don’t have a clean place to gather, look
around for organic community gardens or your
neighborhood’s organic growers and ask to
harvest their weeds in exchange for some medicine or apple pie. People are usually quite happy
with this type of arrangement.
HANDCRAFTED HERBALISM: MINI-COURSE
Chickweed harvest (Stellaria media)
FORAGING GUIDELINE 3: Only forage
for abundant plants with a large population
and favor harvesting plants that are non-native.
Native /non-native: Is your species native and
tied into local food webs, or is it an escapee from
other lands? Non-natives often displace native
species by competing with them for natural
resources. These opportunistic plants haven’t
evolved locally with the same checks and balances
that native plants have experienced. Non-natives
often flourish despite local stressors as compared
to native plants, which experience more disease
and predation. Invasive plants don’t provide the
same nourishment in the food chain because
many insects have not coevolved with them.
That said, many non-native “weeds” stick close
to humans, thriving in cities, gardens, fields and
the like. They don’t go into sensitive ecosystems,
like woodland forests or wetlands.
Population size: Know your local population
size and the range of the particular species you
are courting. Is the local population large enough
and close enough to other members of its species
to consider harvesting? Is the range of species
within the whole eastern coast or is it limited to
your bioregion? You can consult field guides such
as the United Plant Savers (resources listed at the
end of this article) and state and federal listings of
endangered species to learn about at-risk plants in
your area. Gather only plants that are abundant,
and never harvest endangered plant species unless
you are involved in a structured plant rescue.
In my practice, I favor plant species with a larger
population and avoid using rare or less populous
species. Certain plants I do not harvest from the
wild, and I teach my students the same. Here
are some rare plants from North America that I
recommend to never harvest from the wild:
Don’t harvest these plants from the wild!
• Ginseng (Panax quinquefolius, Araliaceae)
• Goldenseal (Hydrastis canadensis, Ranunculaceae)
• False unicorn root (Chamaelirium luteum,
Melanthiaceae)
• Unicorn root (Aletris farinosa, Nartheciaceae)
• Sundew (Drosera spp., Droseraceae)
• Lady’s slipper (Cypripedium spp., Orchidaceae)
• Trillium (Trillium spp., Trilliaceae)
HANDCRAFTED HERBALISM: MINI-COURSE
Certain herbs I will harvest but use sparingly and
only in certain situations where a more common
herb can’t be substituted. I continually reassess
the ethical harvest of certain plants depending
on how their populations are faring. I have seen
certain herbs become less abundant during the
last two decades of wildcrafting in the southern
Appalachians. Wild yam (Dioscorea spp.,
Dioscoreaceae) and black cohosh (Actaea racemosa, Ranunculaceae) are of particular concern
and should be sourced from cultivated sources
whenever possible.
Many rare woodland medicinals, native to
North America, are now cultivated in the woods
in a sustainable fashion. I highly recommend
supporting woodland growers of rare medicinals
or growing the herbs yourself. The medicinal
understory of the forest is a valuable asset and
can be managed for regenerative harvest. The
intact forest, with all of its useful gifts of timber,
food, fiber, biodiversity, beauty, water retention,
carbon sequestering, hammock hanging and
wildlife habitat, is an additional advantage to
woodland cultivation of native medicinal flora.
are dormant, or mostly dormant—for instance,
in the fall or spring.
“In nature, and I cannot stress this often
enough, all things are related to each other.”
—Rudolf Steiner
Regeneration: Know how each plant grows and
observe its form and habits. For example, when
harvesting bark, I harvest a whole limb and use
all the bark and twigs rather than taking bark off
the main trunk, which exposes the tree to pathogens by creating a wound with a large surface area.
When gathering roots I often take a side root if the
plant is growing clonally or replant the root crown
with enough plant matter to support regrowth.
If you are replanting a root crown or portion
of a root system, take care to cut back some of
the aboveground stems to compensate for the
root loss. In addition, make sure there are some
buds present in the root system and replant them
pointing upward and at the same depth as they
were growing when you first harvested the plant.
FORAGING GUIDELINE 4: Be aware of the
optimal time to harvest and the most regenerative practices.
Timing: Observe the reproductive cycles of the
plants you harvest to ensure regeneration. For
example, it is generally best to harvest roots from
perennial herbs after a plant has already flowered and seeded. Knowing how a plant changes
throughout the seasons also helps to know
when to harvest food and medicine for optimal
flavor and medicinal strength. Many wild greens
become chewy or bitter or both as the season
progresses. Dandelion (Taraxacum officinale) is
a prime example of an edible with leaves that
become exceedingly more bitter as the season
progresses. Some fruits, such as autumn olive
(Elaeagnus umbellata), become sweeter after the
first frost. We generally harvest roots when plants
Harvesting sarsparilla (Smilax sp.)
HANDCRAFTED HERBALISM: MINI-COURSE
In the United States, national parks are often
visited for their natural beauty and are not generally logged or leased for grazing cattle. The U.S.
National Forests are often managed for resources
and may be clear-cut and grazed by cattle. You
can often obtain permits to gather wild plants for
personal use from the U.S. Forest Service. Check
with your local office.
Gratitude and respect: Please remember to
ask the plant for its permission and leave it an
offering: a song, some water, your hair, the grain
you eat the most. Gratitude and respect for all
life nourishes happiness and connects us to the
deeper unseen places.
Beauty: Always refill your holes and leave an area
more beautiful than when you came.
Harvesting sarsparilla root (Smilax sp.)
When harvesting leaves and stems, try to take just
a couple shoots off each plant so the remaining
plant may still photosynthesize and reproduce. If
you’re harvesting leaves from a woody plant, pull
the leaves off the stem and leave the twigs and
branches to form new leaves in subsequent years.
Other Considerations
Preparation: Tinctures concentrate the medicine of plants as compared to tea, so you need to
gather less of a plant. If you are working with a
less abundant plant, consider this form of medicine to stretch what you have so you don’t need
to harvest as much.
Legalities/permission: Always ask for permission from the landowner if harvesting on private
land. If you want to harvest on governmental
land, you can check with the managing agency
for regulations and permits. Be aware of the
different classifications of land management.
United Plant Savers is a nonprofit organization
with a mission to protect native medicinal
plants of the United States and Canada and
their native habitat while ensuring an abundant renewable supply of medicinal plants for
generations to come.
Here is a description from the UpS regarding their
designations of “At risk” and “To watch”: “For the
benefit of the plant communities, wild animals,
harvesters, farmers, consumers, manufacturers,
retailers and practitioners, we offer this list of wild
medicinal plants which we feel are currently most
sensitive to the impact of human activities. Our
intent is to assure the increasing abundance of the
medicinal plants that are currently in decline due
to expanding popularity and shrinking habitat
and range. UpS is not asking for a moratorium
on the use of these herbs. Rather, we are initiating
programs designed to preserve these important
wild medicinal plants.”
“In every walk with nature one receives
far more than he seeks.” – John Muir
HANDCRAFTED HERBALISM: MINI-COURSE
“At Risk” List
“To Watch” List American Ginseng—Panax quinquefolius
Arnica—Arnica spp.
Bloodroot—Sanguinaria canadensis
Butterfly Weed—Asclepias tuberosa
Black Cohosh—Actaea racemosa
Cascara Sagrada—Frangula purshiana (Rhamnus
purshiana)
Blue Cohosh—Caulophyllum thalictroides
Echinacea—Echinacea spp.
Eyebright—Euphrasia spp.
False Unicorn Root—Chamaelirium luteum
Goldenseal—Hydrastis canadensis
Lady’s Slipper Orchid—Cypripedium spp.
Lomatium—Lomatium dissectum
Osha—Ligusticum porteri, L. spp.
Peyote—Lophophora williamsii
Sandalwood—Santalum spp. (Hawaii only)
Slippery Elm—Ulmus rubra
Sundew—Drosera spp.
Trillium, Beth Root—Trillium spp.
True Unicorn—Aletris farinosa
Venus Flytrap—Dionaea muscipula
Virginia Snakeroot—Aristolochia serpentaria
Wild Yam—Dioscorea villosa, D. spp.
Chaparro—Castela emoryi
Elephant Tree—Bursera microphylla
Gentian—Gentiana spp.
Goldthread—Coptis spp.
Kava Kava—Piper methysticum (Hawaii only)
Lobelia—Lobelia spp.
Maidenhair Fern—Adiantum pendatum
Mayapple—Podophyllum peltatum
Oregon Grape—Mahonia spp.
Partridge Berry—Mitchella repens
Pink Root—Spigelia marilandica
Pipsissewa—Chimaphila umbellata
Ramps—Allium tricoccum (recently added)
Spikenard—Aralia racemosa, A. californica
Stone Root—Collinsonia canadensis
Stream Orchid—Epipactis gigantea
Turkey Corn—Dicentra canadensis
White Sage—Salvia apiana
Wild Indigo—Baptisia tinctoria
Yerba Mansa—Anemopsis californica
HANDCRAFTED HERBALISM: MINI-COURSE
Further Learning
Dandelion flowers (Taraxacum officinale)
Books on Wild Foods
Identifying and Harvesting Edible and
Medicinal Plants
Preparing Edible Wild Plants and the Forager’s
Harvest
by “Wildman” Steve Brill
by Samuel Thayer
I’ve learned more about wild food from this book
than any other. It lists identifying characteristics
and detailed preparation information for each
plant. Lots of interesting anecdotal asides.
See above.
Edible Wild Plants: Wild Foods from Dirt
to Plate
by John Kallas, PhD
One of the finest books on wild edible greens,
with thorough species descriptions, beautiful
photographs and recipes.
Nature’s Garden, a Guide to Identifying
Harvesting
by Samuel Thayer
Thayer’s two books are hands-down the best
resources on wild foods and are enjoyable to read
and very informational. Highly recommended.
Foraging and Feasting: A Field Guide and
Wild Food Cookbook
by Dina Falconi; Illustrated by Wendy Hollender
Beautiful illustrated wild foods reference with
lots of herbal and wild foods recipes.
HANDCRAFTED HERBALISM: MINI-COURSE
Elder flower harvest (Sambucus nigra var. canadensis)
Edible flowers -foraged and homegrown
Wild Foods Resources
Eat the Weeds
Green Deane from Florida shares his love of wild
foods, he has many YouTube videos on foraging,
especially for sub-tropical and tropical plants
Eat Weeds
Wild foods blog from the U.K.
Eco-Images – Vickie Shufer’s website
Vickie teaches classes on eastern coastal wild
foods and publishes the digital quarterly “Wild
Foods Forum.”
Firefly Gathering
The Firefly Gathering is held near Asheville, NC
and teaches skills for living with the earth.
Forager’s Harvest
Samuel Thayer is one of the finest writers on
wild foods, his books on the subject are excellent.
Hunger and Thirst
Foraging, feasting, and adventure in the Rocky
Mountains. Beautiful wild foods photos,
humorous writing and fun!
Mushroom Expert
Identifying mushrooms, keys, photographs.
Wild Abundance
Natalie Bogwalker’s primitive skills classes and
consultations.
Wild Food Plants
Sunny Savage’s blog and website, she also has
many YouTube videos on the subject.
Wildman Steve Brill
Author and teacher of wild foods in NYC, Steve
Brill is a thorough and detailed writer, highly
recommended.
The Chestnut School’s Pinterest page has two
boards you might find helpful: botany and wild
foods.
Here are some of my articles on Wild Foods,
including on sochan and lamb’s-quarters.
Our Herbal Immersion Program has a whole
module on wild foods.
All photos and text © Juliet Blankespoor 2016
Chestnut School of Herbal Medicine
www.ChestnutHerbs.com