A Taylor’d Approach for May 11, 2022
The wonders of plants
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Lately, I’ve been learning a lot about plants. I’m late to the party, I know. A few thousand years late, really. I’ve always appreciated plants for their beauty and nutrition, but that was always where my attention stopped, despite the vast wealth of plant knowledge available from centuries of humanity.
What sparked my particular interest in learning more was watching the show “Alone”with my dad. It’s a reality competition where participants get cast off into the deep wilderness and have to survive, well, alone, for as long as they can. In one early episode, a young woman was bitten by venomous spiders, which the show revealed were Chilean Recluse spiders with venom more potent than a rattlesnake’s.
So, what did she do? Not call it quits and get to a doctor, surprisingly. Instead, she fashioned some native plantains and Usnea lichen into a paste, which she used to successfully draw out the poison, curing herself out in the middle of nowhere with no help from anyone. What?! That blew my mind more than it probably should’ve and I realized for all my preparedness for challenges in life, I’d completely ignored a huge asset available in the world.
I’d always been aware of herbalism, but I’d never given it much thought. My mother worked in the medical field, so growing up I learned to think of medical solutions in a very clinical sense. I knew a nonsteroidal like ibuprofen could safely mix with an analgesic like acetaminophen for pain and something with bismuth subsalicylate would be good for nausea.
I’m just now realizing, embarrassingly late, that I had never really much thought about the fact that many medications are derived from plants. And as much as some folks reject the connection between nature and chemicals, plants are made up of all kinds of wonderful, helpful chemicals that are similarly found in so many pills. I had no idea that cooked elderberries could help treat shingles, or that yarrow was a styptic that could help stop bleeding, or that the seeds from Queen Anne’s Lace could act as a contraceptive! What else have I been missing on my hikes through the hills?
This isn’t to say I’ll be turning my back on modern medicine. I personally wouldn’t try to combat a serious medical issue with my own concoctions, no matter how confident I was in them. For better or worse, there are certain things modern technology has given us that I personally feel just can’t be beat.
But with my eyes opened to some of the wonders that come with the lush green plants I like to grow anyway, maybe next time my insomnia acts up I’ll try out valerian root and lavender instead of popping down to the drug store for melatonin. Maybe I’ll pull up some licorice or marshmallow root next time I have a sore throat.
Maybe I’ll keep learning the ways my little plant friends can enrich my life with more than just their nutrition.
