Power of Flower, Field and Wood

By Karin Edmondson

“You are in communion with the whole of life.”
—Deepak Chopra

Consciousness. Spirit. Universal connectivity. Dig through the human rhetoric and cultural advertising campaigns of each major religion for the unifying truth: we are, all of us, connected in the fabric of the Universe. Non-religious spiritual leaders gently suggest the same reality: everything is alive and everything matters. Those who study medicinal plants are fundamentally conscious of these shared energy reverberations. Just like each of us doddering humans with our “staggering, rambling lives” (quote Iris Murdoch) have a mission, a raison d’etre, so too for plants. Robinia psuedoacacia, the Black Locust, is a tree that “fixes atmospheric nitrogen and in this way partially creates its own nitrogen” (Dirr, Michael. Manual of Woody Landscape Plants. Illinois: Stipes Publishing, rev. 1998), one of several colonial trees or species that will grow in poor or degraded soil and revive the health of the soil. Black Locust is commonly and frequently used as a hardy, reliable street tree. Observe this scientific horticultural certainty from a more spiritual, conscious level, and recognize that the Black Locust grows on a certain nutritionally degraded spots because its mission is to restore the soil to health. Life begets life. Plants inhabit an area for a reason. That their medicinal properties exist not simply for humans (a grand and perverse, yet very human, egotistical assumption) but to heal the earth reverberates like some radical idea in the rational, Western Judeo-Christian world that decrees dominion over plants and animals.

“Everything has a spirit and life force,” says Margo Mullein standing in asphalted parking lot of the Catskill Price Chopper on a Tuesday early November morning. Including Margo, there are four in our group for the Walk on the Wild Side class that promises “seasonally inspired wild harvest opportunities” and meets once per season: May, August, November and February. A very unnatural parking lot is our meeting venue since our site is along a rural stretch of Route 9W. Margo explains that she was called to the site when she recently participated in a Burmese Peace Walk along the very same route, “a road that I usually detest because it is so industrial yet on this walk I was completely taken with the beauty of Route 9W.” She wanted to walk the same route today, “take the same journey to look at a spot in a different way.” Before the walk commenced, Margo read from Sacred Smoke about Verbascum thapsus or Mullein, the plant we were to be harvesting. Some common names: Torchweed, Woolen Blanket, Velvet Plant. Mullein is a biannual, meaning its life cycle is two years long. First year mullein is a low growing, spreading rosette of silky soft downy leaves—ovate, acute apice (tip), crennated margin (edge) that “hug the ground like a blanket.” The second year plant sends up a flower stalk that can reach up to eight feet tall; as Margo describes it “she reaches for the sky.” When you see mullein think lungs: gentle, calming relief to the respiratory system. Mullein’s large concentrations of mucilage soothe the mucous membranes of the respiratory system by reducing inflammation of the trachea and soothing inflamed tissues. Every part of the mullein plant is medicinally valuable. The leaves can be used fresh or dried in teas, infused with boiling water, steeped for four to eight hours and three cups ingested per day. Native Americans would smoke dried leaves to relive lung congestion and modern practices of this application are applied to asthmatic conditions. Native Americans also placed mullein leaves in their moccasins (as cushions) and today’s runners and joggers still carry on this practice.” The tall flower spike “like an ear of corn” contains tiny, yellow flowers that, when infused in organic olive oil is effective for reliving pain and inflammation of the ear canal. “By infusing flowers in organic olive oil,” says Margo, “you capture mullein’s sedative and bactericidal actions. Three drops three times a day brings a lot of benefit to those suffering from earaches and ear infections. The root can be dried and burned in order to inhale the fumes. My personal experience with the root is that it will reach into the tiny threads of the lung system so I use it with chronic or severe conditions in combination with the leaf so it addresses the ‘whole.’” And one other fun application of the mullein stalk: “the Romans and English dipped the stalks in suet and burned them as torches.”

Along the walk to the site and in between spot identifications of Teasel, Burdock, Polk Root and Knotweed or Japanese bamboo, Margo’s instructive talk was peppered with phrases uttered by other herbalists: Plants are drawn to a particular place for a reason, a purpose. What a plant will give to you is not only energetically around there but also in the soil. What you need grows outside your door. Margo had a particularly interesting angle on the predominance of knotweed, that invasive (labeled thus by extension agents and horticulturalists alike) plant with insidious creep along Catskill creeks that will infest and choke native flora. Margo addressed the plant as “beautiful” and “here for a reason as the most important treatment for Lyme disease. She grows along stream beds and uses water has part of her reproductive system. Our bodies are large percentage water and she can be used as a catalyst to transport medication into remote, dark parts of our system where the Lyme disease embeds itself. She flushes out the Lyme disease and crosses the blood brain barrier.”

Teasel, another plant that is helpful in combating Lyme disease, grew freely alongside Route 9W. Also rampant was Burdock, a plant with “a life’s mission that is very persistent, possessed of a strong will to reproduce. Her gift is blood cleansing and detoxification of the liver and kidney.” A few steps down from the burdock, we happened upon a striking shrub with shiny purple stems and heavy purple fruit sets: Polk Root, a plant that in large doses of ingested berries and root is fatal. Margo did explain that even the lethal Polk Root had her beneficial purpose: “she will open up clogged breast ducts for milking mothers when she is applied topically as a salve. But even then, she comes with a warning: do not breast feed from the treated breast for at least three to four days.”

When we arrived at the site, a recklessly excavated sloping hillside nearly one mile outside of Catskill, Margo advised us to “respectfully harvest from the plants and to engage our five senses. Think about where the plant you are harvesting is energetically. Mullein contains magnesium, iron and sulfur. So this site must be deficient in these minerals. Mullein is a calmative. She is here for a purpose.” Before we began harvesting, we each scooped a pinch of cornmeal, sprinkled it over a mullein and gave thanks while explaining what we were about to do. Although she is a Brooklyn native, Margo has, since she was a child vacationing in the Catskills, “been drawn to nature, to the woods to sit for hours and listen to the plants around me. Only after my first child was I truly inspired to listen to what they had to say to me, medicinally, as healing elements. Cultivating communication with a plant is the same as with a human, the more I pay attention, the more I receive in the way of messages, of communion. For fifteen years this has been my serious life’s work.”

We spent about forty-five minutes at the site. Before we embarked on our harvest missions, Margo asked us each to harvest a leaf for our communal tea. Then she instructed us to “listen to what the plants are telling you. Why are you here? Harvest what you intuitively feel you should, whether that is leaf, or root or flower.” I wandered around a bit, just absorbing the field of mullein, rosette after rosette, the highest concentration of mullein I’d ever seen in the region. One in particular piqued my interest. A mullein had nestled in between a grand maple tree, ramrod straight with swirling, flaked silver gray bark. This tree stood solo and alone, without her neighbors, probably clearcut, and the image of this mullein, situated snugly in between two roots at the maple’s base resonated like a sort of David comforting Goliath. I harvested mullein leaves which are now hanging in a cloth in my cool, dark, dry closet. I will make tea for my friend Mark, of Spruceton Valley.

On our return walk to Catskill, Margo spotted a healthy Motherwort plant (Leonurus cardiaca) growing uphill from the drainage ditch along Route 9W. We stopped as she told us how motherwort is a blood cleanser, helps to remove fats from the bloodstream and is a calming agent and an excellent heart toner. From atop the hill, a woman hurries toward us, shouting: “Can I help you? This is my property.” When she approaches, Margo calls her attention to the motherwort and explains why we were admiring her plant. The woman immediately calms down and offers us to take the “Mamawort.” She further offers the information that she is currently taking three different medications for blood pressure. What you need grows outside of your door.

Later that afternoon, I visited an artist friend of mine. She has galleries across the nation and has achieved the sort of material success that our mind-based, ego-centric world idealizes, yet her spirituality and consciousness has grown proportionately to her earthly successes. There, in her recently professionally landscaped front gardens with showy perennials from a nursery, grew a lush, full gorgeous first year mullein. Larger than any of the specimens at the 9W site. This artist still indulges in the occasional cigarette. When you think mullein, think of lungs and respiratory system. What my friend needed was growing right outside of her magnificent wrought iron front door.

In addition to the Walk on the Wild Side quarterly classes ($25) individually, Margo also offers two other opportunities for more in depth medicinal plant study. Walking the Wheel: A Cycle of Life Apprenticeship is a four-season journey exploring the energetic life cycle of all living things with a focus on our natural growth patterns. Following the wisdom of the Native American Medicine Wheel and the teachings of the hour directions, participants will choose a single plant, tree or shrub to observe, meditate and paint during the course of the apprenticeship. There is much to learn from creation when we turn into its rhythm. This course goes deep and is designed to provide opportunity, through ceremony, to stop, listen and open ones self to a journey of respect and gratitude, which will inspire your walking the wheel of life. An investment of $500 includes materials, a wild/organic lunch and field days. A field day might be a fireside overnight journey or a pot luck sunset celebration. Classes run from 10 am until 4 pm. The Budding Herbalist: An Eight Month Journey takes you into the magical world of wild (medicinal) plants. With an open heart and your feet on the earth, learn how to identify plants, their gifts and the many ways in which we can work with them. Using the plant as principal teacher, you’ll meet and greet many local wild growing medicinal plants, while you get to know your individual plant ally(s). This course is designed for the beginner or the practicing herbalist who would like to get out of the book and into the fields and forests. An investment of $650 includes materials, a wild/organic lunch and field days. Classes run from 10 am until 4 pm. Margo Mullein and Morning Star Herbals can be reached via 518 943 1929. Margo is a Certified Herbalist, Plant Intuitive and One Light Healing Touch Practitioner Healer.

Editor’s Note: As with any health care regimen, consult your doctor before taking any herbs. And if foraging is of interest to you, PLEASE consult a certified, experienced herbalist before you ingest anything you’ve picked out of the woods, even if your plant looks exactly like the ones pictured here.