Rebecca Lerner's Blog, page 8

Alder Tree: A Medicinal Powerhouse

Alder leaves, top view, as seen in summer

I often find myself smiling lately, especially on the afternoons when I lead guided plant identification hikes of the forest for individuals. I’ve been working for myself full time since the winter and between writing, teaching, and speaking, I’m the happiest I’ve ever been.

The tree that’s most captured my attention on these guided hikes lately is red alder, Alnus rubra. Alder bark, leaves, and cones are medicinal. Alder has multiple uses, all highly valuable.

It’s detoxifying, both as a blood purifier and a lymphatic cleanser. It’s also astringent and good for supporting absorption of nutrients in the small intestine, according to herbalist Michael Moore. Alder is also used internally as a remedy for tuberculosis and sore throat; externally as a wash for skin infections.

Underside of alder leaf

Maybe even more exciting, the southwestern herbalist Kiva Rose writes on her website about using alder with great success as against antibiotic-resistant staph infections and externally infused into oils for pain relief. She says the catkins and bark are the most potent parts for pain-relieving. Herbalists from the nineteenth century write about using it for chronic skin infections of various kinds.

Alder bark

Kiva recommends making a tincture after drying the plant matter first, using one part plants to five parts menstruum with 50% alcohol. Other sources write about tincturing the fresh bark in a 1:2 ratio with 50% alcohol. You could also make a decoction, which is like a tea except you bring the plant parts to a boil and in the water and then simmer them for 15 minutes or so. (Decoctions are used for woody plant parts such as bark and roots.)

Alder is in the birch family. You can find alder trees across the country in forests near water. Red alder in particular lives on the West Coast from coastal Alaska to southern California. It prefers disturbed habitat. Look for a deciduous tree with smooth bark that’s often mottled with white patches of lichen. The leaves are alternate, toothed, and the edges are curled under the underside, which is hairy. It’s a pretty straight vertically growing tree, not curvy like dogwood or even cedar occasionally can be.

Alder catkins and cones

Bonus trivia: Alder heals the land too. It’s nitrogen-fixing for the soil. And you can use the bark to make an orange-red dye.

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Book News:

By popular demand, you can now order a special signed copy of my new book, DANDELION HUNTER, directly from me, and get a personalized inscription! Order now and I will be able to send it to you on or before the official publication date of April 2! (Domestic shipping only at this time. If you are an international reader, e-mail me to place a special order).

Upcoming classes:

- The very first Urban Foraging 101 of 2013 will be 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday March 24, meeting in the gravel lot outside of Townshend’s Tea on Alberta Street, Portland. A very enjoyable urban plant identification walk, followed by a plant-spirit meditation and herbal smoking experience. $40, with a $10 discount for students who have taken the class in prior seasons. You can pay via PayPal or bring cash; drop-ins welcome.

Guided Hikes & Speaking:

To inquire about hiring me for a guided plant identification hike of the city or forest, or to have me come speak to your organization, e-mail me at RebeccaELerner@gmail.com

Could plants be conscious?

Plant mandala by Danmala

Many of us nature lovers and herbalists feel a spiritual connection with plants, but do you think they might be conscious? Read a new excerpt from my book DANDELION HUNTER about this idea, then tell me what you think in the comments below.

You can also download a free PDF of the first four pages of the book, about my first wild food survival adventure.



DANDELION HUNTER comes out really soon: April 2! You can catch me reading it on my Pacific Northwest mini-tour planned for this spring. If you’re not local, you can join me for a virtual reading at 4 pm Eastern/7 pm Pacific on Tuesday, April 2 here. It’s free to watch and you can even ask me questions using your webcam!

Get your copy from Amazon, Powells, or Indie Bound.

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Upcoming classes:

- The very first Urban Foraging 101 of 2013 will be held 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday March 24, meeting in the gravel lot outside of Townshend’s Tea on Alberta Street, Portland. A very enjoyable urban plant identification walk, followed by a plant-spirit meditation and herbal smoking experience. $40, with a $10 discount for students who have taken the class in prior seasons.

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Super cool free resource:

You can get free audio, video and notes of college classes from Yale, Harvard, and other top universities on Anatomy & Physiology and other very relevant courses for us herbally inclined folks at http://www.onlinecourses.com/

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How to Make Your Own Herbal Syrup

Dried herbs begin losing their potency anywhere from six months to a year after storage, and exposure to sunlight accelerates their decline. I thought about that as I looked through my herbal pantry today at the unused stash of wildcrafted stinging nettle, pineapple weed (wild chamomile), lemon balm, and pine needles. And at my store-bought jars of slippery elm bark and oatstraw. I considered how it good it would be to take all of these herbs regularly.

Lately I’ve been fraught with digestive troubles and adrenal fatigue, which I recognize as the result of working too hard and taking on too much stress in a life-long, chronic sort of way. I have since changed my lifestyle, and under the guidance of my naturopathic physician, even radically changed my diet. (My vegetarianism is on hiatus after 14 successful years, which after developing an intolerance to soy and trouble digesting beans, has been exchanged for an experiment in conscious pseudo-paleo omnivorism). And yet my stomach troubles and fried nerves remain.

Fortunately, these herbs will support my recovery tremendously. Consider these incredible benefits:

Oatstraw via Wikipedia

* Stinging nettle: Contains fatty acids and protein, B vitamins, and many minerals, especially magnesium, calcium, and iron. Nourishing for the entire body and considered a “tonic,” an herb to strengthen, the adrenal system.

* Oatstraw: Strengthens nervous system and is especially useful for exhaustion and depression. Rich in calcium.

* Wild chamomile: Calms the nervous system and relieves indigestion and inflammation in the stomach.

* Slippery elm: Nourishes and soothes inflamed mucus membranes in the digestive system.

* Lemon balm: Relieves tension, anxiety and depression, and relieves gas and spasms in digestive tract.

I could prepare these herbs in various ways. I thought about drinking lots of tea. But that would be a lot of tea, and a lot of time spent mixing the herbs together into a tea ball and then washing said tea ball. Then I thought about turning the herbs into a tincture, an alcohol extract. But the tincture recipe for dried herbs is 1 part herb to 5 parts solvent, which would get expensive in terms of alcohol. It’s also not the most pleasant-tasting way to take herbs on an ongoing basis. So then I had a better idea: Herbal syrup!

If you make a strong decoction and reduce it, and then add in some glycerin and honey, you are left with an herbal syrup that lasts for up to a year in the fridge. And it tastes much sweeter and therefore more palatable than plain tea, too. You can then enjoy it straight or add it to a flavorful herbal tea as a sweetener.

The recipe for making an herbal syrup is very easy:

1) Gather together whatever herbs you would like, using the ratio of 1 cup of dried herbs per 1 pint of water. Bring them to a boil. If you can use a glass pot, that is ideal, because metal can interact with herbs and alter their chemistry. But use whatever you have.

2) Simmer until the water level is reduced to one-half or even down to one-quarter of what it was. This is your herbal concentrate.

3) Let it cool, and then strain the herbs out. You could use a coffee filter or a mesh screen or a handkerchief. Squeeze the herbs to get any last bits of medicine extracted in the water.

4) Add 8 tablespoons each of honey and vegetable glycerin per quart of herbal concentrate. Stir it in. Refrigerate it. Voila!

Warning: This recipe is incredibly delicious.

Suggested dose: 1 to 2 tbsp per day.

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Learn to make herbal medicines with me at my upcoming Herbal Medicine 101 class 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Sunday, March 10, at HARP, 1611 SE Bybee Blvd., Portland. $40, including medicine to take home. Space is limited and advance registration is required here.

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Regarding the Infinity of Herbal Wisdom

Herbal mandala by the talented artist Danmala.

One of the reasons I enjoy learning about edible and medicinal plants is that the subject is virtually inexhaustible. You can’t get bored, and you can’t master it. I have been reading about and using wild plants for over four years now, but I still often feel like a newb. It’s a classic case of “the more you know, the more you know you don’t know.”

For example, say you’ve learned how to identify a given plant — but do you know what botanical family it belongs to, and what the shared characteristics of that family are? If so, then do you know if it is native or exotic? Do you know how it reproduces, and if it is annual or perennial? Perhaps you may know that its roots are antimicrobial, but do you know about its many other, less-publicized uses? Have you considered the perspective on that herb from Chinese medicine? Maybe you know you can eat the leaves of a common “weed,” but have you ever harvested its seeds? Maybe you know how to dry it and make a tea, but do you know its spirit properties, or how it is used as a flower essence?

Fortunately, the internet is proliferating with opportunities for ongoing learning. I’d like to share with you some of my favorite free ones:

* Here’s a free issue of Plant Healer, an online “journal” that comes out as a 100+ page PDF file put together by Kiva Rose, a respected herbalist in New Mexico. This issue features articles on wild food and herbalism by authors Susun Weed, Matthew Wood, and Samuel Thayer, among others. When you click that link, it will automatically begin downloading. It has the feel of a folksy zine to it.

* Kiva also has an excellent free in-depth materia medica on her website, Bear Medicine Herbals. Here is a great article she wrote on the Alder tree.

* Michael Tierra is the herbalist author of the classic book “The Way of Herbs” and he also runs the School of Planetary Herbology, which offers distance classes for both family and professional herbalists. He and his wife, Lesley Tierra, write very informative blog posts and articles that offer a cross-cultural, in-depth perspective on the use of herbs. Here’s one on differentiating “wind-chill” colds from “wind-heat” colds and the different herbs appropriate for each. You can sign up to get these e-mailed to you for free.

* Henriette’s Herbal is a website with a wealth of notes on individual herbs as well as some really neat old-timey articles she scans in, such as this one about lobelia from a book by R.L. Hool from 1922 called “Common Plants and Their Uses in Medicine.”

What websites do you recommend?

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I also offer many opportunities for learning. Here are my upcoming classes:

* This Thursday, an Herbal Smoking Blends workshop. Make a blend for trance work, to quit smoking cigarettes, and more.

* Next Thursday, a guided meditation to meet the spirit of Western Red Cedar.

* On Sunday, March 10, from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. at HARP, 1611 SE Bybee, Intro to Medicine Making! Learn how to make tinctures, infusions and decoctions, infused oils, and salves in this hands-on workshop, and go home with some medicine, too.

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Bonus freebies: Vancouver, B.C.-based urban forager Garliq Herbalista is offering a free webinar called “Connecting to the Heart of the World” from 11 a.m. to noon on Valentine’s Day.

And, the Portland Plant Medicine Gathering folks are having a winter event this Sunday. It’s free!

Exciting Book News & Reviews!

Publishers Weekly just reviewed my book and they called it “the funniest herbal adventure you’ll ever read”!

If you haven’t heard, it’s called Dandelion Hunter: Foraging the Urban Wilderness, and it’s a literary nonfiction book I spent two years writing. It’s coming out in paperback and e-book through Globe Pequot Press on April 2. If you pre-order now, you might even get your copy sooner than that.

Brian Hiatt, senior writer at Rolling Stone magazine said: “If and when the apocalypse arrives, you’ll want Rebecca Lerner by your side – or, at least, her lucidly written new book, in which she and a pack of endearingly odd Portland pals demonstrate how to take locavorism to a whole new level (and provide some unexpected history, biology and mycology lessons in the process). You’ll never look at weeds the same way again.”

Herbalist author Matthew Wood said: “Wild girl herbalist Becky Lerner plunges into the green world on page one and keeps the reader dazzled with one crazy adventure after another, all the while educating us in the art of hunting the wild dandelion. Never has practical advice about wild foraging been so entertaining. Move over Euell Gibbons.”

No matter where you live, you can come to the book tour for free! I’m hosting a live Internet launch party on Tuesday, April 2, through Shindig.com at 4 p.m. Pacific / 7 p.m. EST. You’ll be able to watch me read from the book live via webcam as well ask me questions using yours! Make sure to register in advance so you can tune in; Shindig.com is set up with a few hoops. You can also tweet questions to me @UrbanForager or using the #DandelionHunter hashtag.

My in-person tour dates thus far scheduled are:

Portland, Oregon:

Book Release Party on Friday, April 5

Anna Banana’s Cafe

Reading, Q&A, book sale & signing, and live music by Brother of the Silver Star

7 p.m.

2403 NE Alberta St., Portland, OR

Free

Powell’s Books on Hawthorne on Thursday, April 18

Reading, Q&A, book sale & signing

7:30 p.m.

3723 SE Hawthorne Blvd., Portland, OR

Free

Cannon Beach, Oregon:

Cannon Beach History Center & Museum on Monday, April 15

Reading, Q&A, book sale & signing

7:00 p.m.

1387 South Spruce Street, Cannon Beach, OR

$2 donation for the museum, free for students/military

Eugene, Oregon:

Cozmic Pizza on Earth Day, Monday, April 22

Reading, Q&A, book sale & signing

6 p.m.

199 West 8th Ave., Eugene, OR

Free

Seattle, Washington:

Third Place Books on Wednesday, May 8

Reading, Q&A, book sale & signing

7 p.m.

17171 Bothell Way NE, Lake Forest Park, WA

Free

Olympia, Washington:

Olympia Timberland Library on Thursday, May 9

Reading, Q&A, book sale & signing

7:30 p.m.

313 8th Ave SE, Olympia, WA

Free

If you want me to visit your city and know of an organization that will pay my expenses to do so, shoot me an email at RebeccaELerner@gmail.com

You can find a detailed synopsis of the book here.

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How a Lichen Saved the Day

The Usnea lichen is also known as “Old Man’s Beard.” Here wilderness skills expert Brian Schuch models for the camera.

The day Usnea saved began with a Facebook chat.

“How’s things?” I asked my friend.

“I am ILL,” she replied.

“Tell me about your symptoms,” I said.

“It started out as a cough. It’s really just a bad cough, and I feel like it’s in my lungs a bit. My upper body is aching and my head hurts a bit too.”

“Tell me more about the phlegm,” I said.

“I would just say it’s a little yellow and thickish. The cough is dry, not very productive,” she said.

Colored phlegm or mucus is an indicator of infection. Since she said she was coughing it up and felt that the issue was in her lungs, the jar of Usnea lichen tincture in my closet came to mind. Another herbalist I know used it successfully to heal his father of pneumonia. Usnea is a lung medicine. Its use as a respiratory antibiotic has been documented since 1600 B.C. It has also been shown to be more effective than penicillin at combating tuberculosis in studies.

“I have some herbs that could be helpful,” I told her, and she invited me to bring them over.

I brought her the Usnea tincture along with a medicinal herb tea I blended for her made of rosemary (an antiviral), lemon balm (antiviral and mild anti-spasmodic), mullein (soothes the lungs and is an expectorant), and stinging nettle (nutritious and helps the body handle stress). I suggested that she drink the tea 4 to 5 times per day and squeeze two medicine droppers full of the tincture into each cup.

“I predict you will make a full recovery within two days,” I told her.

A week went by before we happened to talk again. She sent me a Facebook message. It said:

“Hi darling! Guess what! The herbs worked magically in 1-2 days!”

Usnea is abundant and easy to wildcraft both in the Pacific Northwest as well as all over the world. To learn how to identify it and how to make medicine with it, check out this previous blog post I wrote about it here.

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Join me for an affordable, hands-on introduction to making your own herbal medicine at home from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Sunday, March 10, at HARP, 1611 SE Bybee, Portland. We will make infusions, decoctions, tinctures, infused oils and salves, and more. $40, advance registration required. Sign up here.

Other upcoming classes:

* Guided meditation to meet Hawthorn & Yarrow, plant spirits who help us with boundaries, this Thursday, Feb. 7, from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.

* Herbal Smoking Blends workshop! Learn how to make them and leave with your own custom blend. Thursday, Feb. 14, from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.

* Guided meditation to meet Western Red Cedar, a plant spirit who helps with protection and grounding, on Thursday Feb. 21, 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.

Winter Wild Edibles: Chickweed

Chickweed is one of the few wild edible greens available in the coldest part of winter. Chickweed, Stellaria media, is a tasty and ubiquitous salad herb you’ll find growing in many sidewalk planters and in wilderness areas, too. It’s a delicate green, usually fewer than five or six inches tall. The flavor is very mild and pleasant, and if anything, mostly tastes like water.

You can identify chickweed by the very fine line of peach fuzz style hair that grows up along the stem and switches sides at each leaf juncture. It looks a bit like a Chinese staircase twirling around, and when it blooms with tiny white star-shaped flowers, I like to think of it as a stairway to the stars. The Latin name Stellaria hints at this, too.

Medicinally, chickweed has a number of actions. If applied externally in a salve or simply mashed up as a poultice, it’s cooling and soothing for skin, very helpful for itching and irritation. Internally, chickweed is a mild diuretic, moving water through the body, helping with detoxification of the lymphatic system, and is known to be a remedy for rheumatism.

This is a great green to eat raw. It can be preserved using vinegar, creating a salad dressing, or glycerine, if you wanted to take it as a tincture. (Related post: How to Make A Glycerin Tincture).

From a spiritual perspective, the essence of this plant comes across to me as sweet, gentle, playful and child-like. While many plants do have male or female energy in them, this one is androgynous. It has a receptivity inherent to it — very yin. Chickweed would be a great plant ally for someone who is working on developing intuition, balancing a too-fiery nature, or wanting to cultivate gentleness.

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Upcoming Classes:

* Guided meditation to connect with the plant spirits of hawthorn & yarrow, great teachers of boundaries, on Thursday, Feb. 7.

* Herbal Smoking Blends workshop on Thursday, Feb. 14.

* Guided meditation to connect with the spirit of Western red cedar, a wonderful ally for sensitive people, on Thursday, Feb. 21.

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Share this post and help your friends and family find a free and healthy winter wild edible!

Stinging Nettle Is Dandruff Shampoo!

[image error] It’s no fun to find that it’s snowing on your scalp. Fortunately, nature makes a free, effective, and painless cure for this common winter-time problem that isn’t that weird-smelling chemical shampoo at the pharmacy: Stinging nettle!

When dandruff struck recently, I was in luck. I had a couple jars full of stinging nettle, Urtica dioica, that I had picked and dried last spring. So I put a tea kettle on the stove, boiled some tap water, and then poured it over the nettle and let it steep until cooled. (In other words, I made an herbal infusion, also known as tea). Then I poured it into an empty bottle of Dr. Bronner’s rose-scented glycerin soap I had around. Well, I thought it was empty — as it turned out, there was a little bit of soap at the bottom, which made the nettle tea smell like rose and preserved it! Tea wouldn’t normally last indefinitely, of course, but glycerin is a preservative, and so now I have a bottle of shampoo that I can keep using.

So far, I’ve washed my hair with it twice, and there’s already been a significant improvement. I’d say it’s 80% better! Even once my scalp is 100% better, I’ll still use it, because nettle is great for your hair regardless. It has a long history of use as a rinse that makes your hair silky and shiny.

Nettle grows in partial and full shade, usually near water. It looks like a mint plant, with square stems and leaves opposite one another, and it stings you if you touch it fresh. It’s possible to find it around Portland now, but it’s most abundant in the spring. Drying it is easy: You just lay it out on a screen or hang it upside down, perhaps in a doorway or from a clothesline indoors.

If you don’t have access to it in the wild or don’t know how to identify it, you can get it online or in your local health store or apothecary — and you can also meet it this spring on one of my guided hikes in Portland!

Stinging nettle has a boundless array of uses. It’s food, medicine for many kinds of ailments, cordage, a spell-breaker in witchcraft, and much more. Check out these other posts about nettle to scratch the surface:

* Stinging nettle for allergy relief

* Five recipes for stinging nettle

How do you like to use nettle? And what other kinds of wild shampoos have you used and loved?

Share this post with your friends and tell them how to cure their dandruff!

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I’m very excited for my upcoming series of plant spirit healing classes, beginning with Rose on January 24!

Fungi Foraging Goes Hollywood?

There’s a new fictional indie flick about mushroom foragers on the east coast called “Now, Forager.” It’s out now and it’s got a limited theatrical release around the country (click here to see where). In Portland, it’s playing at the Living Room Theater until this Thursday, January 4, so I thought you might like to know!

I haven’t seen it myself, but it looks like it might be interesting from a mycological perspective. They got some nice shots of morels in there, after all.

If you’ve seen it, what did you think?