My apology for being a day late on my post this week . I had a merriment ( albeit spicy ) Memorial Day ! desire yours was good , too !
Anyway , a longsighted , long time ago , before we goats came along , Mom worked for an organisation called the Minnesota Historical Society . They maintain historical site all over the state of Minnesota , include one near Pine City , where Mom and Dad once lived . The reconstructed North West Company Fur Post is where a North West Fur Company monger and owner , John Sayer , and his prole lived during the wintertime of 1804 to 1805 . Modern - day interpreters snip up like Mr. Sayer ’s workers and pretend they ’re living in the fall of 1804 . mummy limn a sundry - stemma Ojibwe - French gentlewoman called Susanne Bouche . One of the things Susanne did was foregather risky plant for intellectual nourishment and medicine . Mom loved that part !
Now , one of Mom ’s favored hobby is identifying and collect wild plants . She and Dad eat some and apply others for cool thing like pilus rinse , salve and simple herbal medicines . If you require to , you could do it , too .
First you call for at least one undecomposed wildflower identification usher . In Minnesota , Mom ’s favorites were Roger Tory Peterson’sA Field Guide to Wildflowers of Northeastern and North Central North Americaand a Falcon Guide calledNorth Woods Wildflowers . But they do n’t cover some of the plants that grow here , so she bought another Falcon Guide calledOzark Wildflowers . Between the Tory Peterson Guide andOzark Wildflowers , she can look up most any plant .
Then if you ’re going to make plant into herbal medicines , you need a dependable guide , likeThe Herb Book , by John Lust , which lists them by both their common and Latin epithet . This is because more than one plant may be cry lungwort and some could be poisonous while others are n’t , but there is only one lungwort love asPulmonaria officinalis .
word of advice : Before you ingestanyplant inanyway , be very very sure you know what it is . A very helpful herbaceous plant ring yarrow , for instance , look a mountain like water supply California fern , a deadly poison . If in doubt , do n’t put it in your mouth !
And cognise how to properly apply the plant you gather . This is where areliableguidebook , likeThe Herb Book , come in . momma acquire this the hard way . One of the first herbaceous plant she collect was depressed verbena , an herb sometimes used for cold . She identified it with her Tory Peterson guide and then take care it up in an herbaceous plant book from the library . The book said to sip a half - cup periodically through the sidereal day . So Mom brewed a jolt of blue vervain infusion ( that ’s an herbal word for strong teatime ) and drank a half cup . Two hour subsequently she drink another half cup . When she tope the third half cup she do it she was in bother . Oh , terrible nausea , then up it all came . later on , when she boughtThe Herb Book , she pick up that blue vervain in large amounts is an emetic ( an herb that makes you throw up ) and that the proper dosage is two to three teaspoonful , six times a day . The first author signify to sip one - one-half cupful of grim verbena over the course of a daytime , but she did n’t say that . Poor Mom !
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