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When used correctly, plant medicine can be super effective for those bumps in the road that seem to come with any proper adventure! Fortunately for us, there are a number of super common weeds here on the Front Range of Colorado and throughout the US that make up an ever present summer first aid kit.
If you pick your sumac fruits too early, you end up with slightly yellow water and the merest trace of flavor. Make sure your fruits are deepest red, and have a sour tang to them when you taste a drupe-it should be a pretty potent flavor.
From the fluffy, alien looking fruits, to the scraggly antler-like fuzzy branches, this plant is straight out of the Lorax.
Its also one of our more charismatic New England plants, and makes one of my favorite teas for hot weather.
The other graminoids, while not true grasses, are truly beautiful, and full of fascinating flowers and uses.
Of course, 'graminoids' would also be the perfect name for the main characters of a plant based alien movie "The Attack of the Graminoids"-someone should get on that.)
Without grasses, these rather delightfully corrupting substances wouldn’t even exist.
Mints have a tendency towards stirring up the mucous membranes (that’s all those pink shiny places inside the body that we try not to think about).
So while they definitely affect the whole body, they have an especial affinity for a few specific areas.
These are dirty words in the lingo of many botanists and naturalists. The division that this creates in the botanical/herbal world is astonishing.
With common names like these, it’s hard not to be interested in this plant.
Cyme comes from the French word cime, meaning ‘top/summit’. This one is a bit more capitalist, as the flowers on cymes essentially bloom from the top down.