August Plants Part 2

Ground Ivy, Creeping Charlie, and other names this plant has enjoyed used to preserve and flavor beer!  Yep, beer weed!  It used to be used instead of hops.  It has many medicinal uses such as for inflammation, congestion and related ailments.  In some lores it is considered a cure all and has many listed properties.  It is aligned with spring, new life and growth, and traditionally has been used as a "Spring Tonic" to cure the ails of winter and prepare the body for spring.  This may be due to the antihistamine properties which might help with the excess of spring pollen.

Yellow Wood Sorrel is one of my favorite plants to munch on!  I love the sweet-sour taste of this plant.  I may be a bit strange, but I love the leaves, the flowers and the seed buds.

This plant has been used for liver, digestion and even cancer cures.  It is rumored, however, to adverse effects on the kidneys, but that has not dampened my enjoyment of this plant, and I'm rumored to have healthy organs (long story).  First Nations have used and eaten this plant for thousands of years.  In Druidic lore, this plant represents the common triune nature of the divine (maiden, mother, crone; youth, father, elder, etc.) and thus its equivalent european counterparts were considered sacred plants aligned with the triune.

Black Walnuts abound here.  I have counted at least 20 such trees on my property alone.  I gather these when they fall in late summer and keep them until the husks crumble, but before they sprout.  By that time the nuts inside are mature and flavorful.  This tree does not play well with many other plants, so if you want to cultivate them, make sure you know which plants can tolerate the chemicals this plant produces and keep your other plants far enough away to not be effected.  Also, these are NOT good to have around horses or other herbivores and do not let your dogs chew on the nuts in their husk!  These are commonly known to cause seizures and poisoning in dogs, mostly because they look like fun toys...  The wood of this tree, however, is an excellent hardwood to use in building supplies, as long as you don't have wood chewing dogs.

An excerpt from an article from the purdue university  http://www.agriculture.purdue.edu/fnr/HTIRC/pdf/woeste/KoleBookChapter-BlackWalnut-Pijut.pdf :

Historically, the bark of black walnut was used by several Native Americans, including the Cherokee, 

Delaware, Iroquois, and Meskwaki, in tea as a cathartic, emetic, or disease remedy agent, and chewed or 

applied for toothaches, snake bites, and headaches (Moerman 1998; Moerman 2003). Caution: the bark 

should be used cautiously in medicine because it is poisonous. The Cherokee, Chippewa, and Meskwaki 

also used the bark to make a dark brown or black dye (Moerman 1998; Moerman 2003). The Comanche 

pulverized the leaves of black walnut for treatment of ringworm, the Cherokee used leaves to make a 

green dye, and the Delaware used the leaves as an insecticide to dispel fleas (Moerman 1998; Moerman 2003)

August Plants Part 1

It is the end of berry season where I live, but the beginning of a new round of plants. Plantain are seeding, and the seeds make a pleasant salad topping as well as good feed for the hens.  Our rabbits enjoy the leaves no matter their age, so it is a great fodder plant for our farm as well as good for us.

This is the all purpose, ubiquitous weed wonder-plant as most foragers know, but for those just getting started, this is the #1 versatile forage.  Medicinally, it is an antibiotic as both internal food/concoction/infusion/pill and external salve/poultice and even bandage to help keep out infection.  I haven't seen a yard yet that doesn't have plantain in it, and maybe that is a good thing?  It is also rumored (Culpeper) to be a decongestant and like mint, soothes the digestion.  Culpeper also stated that the powdered leaves in concoctions could control worms, though I haven't used it for this as yet.  Even earlier it was used as a headache remedy for Alexander the Great.  With thousands of years of history behind this plant, you know you can't go wrong having this amazing herb.  In its history this plant was a sacred plant, aligned with healing (no surprise there).  In ancient Christian lore, it was a symbol for those trodding the path of a follower of Christ.  It was used to ward off fatigue as a poultice on the feet, and to ward off venom of evil creatures.  This humble weed is truly the king of herbs.

Lambsquarters is another one of those weeds you find everywhere, but is another ready food source.  It is the left middle plant in the picture.  The leaves are somewhat silvery on the bottom.

The young leaves of this plant have quite a pleasant taste and I often munch on them raw.  I have read, though, that some people don't tolerate the leaves raw because they contain miniscule amounts of saponins.  This plant also has a very ancient history in use as a crop for its leaves, flowers and seeds.  It is part of the family of goosefoot, though and may cause hay fever or allergic reactions, so be careful when testing this plant.  It has been used for stomach aches and to prevent scurvy.  

I believe the plant to the right of the lamb's quarters is the Kentucky version of stinging nettle, but I'm still not 100% sure as it looks very different from the nettles I grew up with.  When I confirm this 100% (meaning I'm going to have to bite the bullet and do a skin test... yeech!) I'll talk more about it.

This plant confounded me when I first came here.  It was everywhere, yet defied positive identification.  I've heard it called everything from 'purple flower weed' to vetch from locals, and no book on local plants identified this herb to me.  One day, I was looking for a different vine to identify, and lo and behold there it was!  Creeping Charlie!  I've since found out this is a distant member of the mint family (which explains why it is all over the place and considered an invasive species... LOL).

Like much of the mint family this has various uses and properties associated with it, and a very long history indeed.  (Stay tuned for part 2)