Aralia racemosa, or just Aralia.

Aralia racemosa, or just Aralia. 

by Paul Manski

"This is one of the plants that you search for if you are an herbalist.

Or you think you want to be an herbalist. Or you are a realist who realizes that from beginningless time we go to plants when we are sick, to heal. To return to balance.

We eat the plants every day to live and in order to heal ourselves whether today, tomorrow or yesterday. we need the plant. we need the strong ones. Or you were a realist who  to wants to be an herbalist.

     The seasons are like saints and holy medals they bring us to where we need to be. Yet the seasons are the dividers for in each season everything changes. The leaves change, and transform  they fall on the ground or they turn yellow or they turn red or they come out soft and green and tiny. In short they change.

     So to find a strong plants those potent medicines that lurk in our memories like dreams just below and come to the surface at dawn like shadows. We need to find a teacher who will walk with us through the seasons and show us the place, the person, and the plants.

    In this bioregion there was an amazing man, who was able to gather others around him, and that learning and teaching goes on, Michael Moore, who taught and taught and walked sat and listened and talked and talked and sold the plants of the southwest. So in some sense everything comes from Michael Moore this herbalist who died in 2009, after awakening and sharing with so many this knowledge of the plants. This comes from Michael Moore and his notes and teaching on spikenard, 

-"Aralia racemosa

Chronic coughing with excess secretions; bronchorrhea; subacute cystitis with mucus in urine, no odor; as an adaptogen similar to Panax.

Chronic laryngitis with excess, abundant mucus.

Chronic pharyngitis with thick tenacious mucus.

Chronic bronchitis with profuse secretions and debility. Acute cough with faucial irritability, wheezing, dry mucus. Adrenal cortex hypofunctions.

Primipara, with irritability, distress in last trimester. - subanemic blood with hypersensitivities."

,because it comes from the same family as ginseng some people including Michael Moore see it, saw it in that light, 

-again quoting from herbalist Michael Moore;

-"The Spikenards are tonics, best in long-term use, and further offer the Ginseng-like effects of modifying metabolic and emotional stresses.", 

"The Aralia or Ginseng Family (Araliaceæ) is closely related to the Parsley- Carrot Family (Umbelliferæ or Apiaceæ), with the main differences being their solid stems, and succulent berries. With few exceptions, the Aralia Family grows in the greatest abundance in cold, wet forests, with acidic, humus-rich soil, and fruit that need constant moisture to germinate.

This makes them far less abundant or numerous than their more adaptable relatives, the Umbelliferæ."  -quoting Michael Moore.

    The eastern tribes the Chippewa, Cherokee, Iroquois have a consensus that the plant is used for colds for what we would describe as the flu or lung infections. In the ethnobotanical literature there's also a historical use for it as a women's for menses or issues with menstruation, and show how versatile in their materia medica, it is it was also used topically for wind wood infections for sprains for broken bones. Some where in there is also the use of it as a tonic, and for protection as we use Yerba Santa, the Chippewa used  a decoction of the root for protection,  "to drive away blue tailed swifts."

It's obvious from reading the ethnobotanical literature that this plant has some magic like Osha or yerba santa.

 Then with the plants, with someone showing you the plants when someone introduces you to a plant. There is some elements of a friend introducing you to an old girlfriend, I guess the question is how recent although it could be just as satisfying, the thought of being a sloppy second does enter-into it. There's also etiquette can you go out with a friends girlfriend? Is that OK?

And what's the role of the friend there's something like an element of being a pimp. Is she a hooker? Are you a John? And then there's that touchy question of virginity. Whenever you enter into the nuts and bolts of things it becomes complex. It's obvious from reading the ethnobotanical literature that this plant has some magic like Osha or yerba santa.

It's like meeting a celebrity at a restaurant, at an intimate restaurant and you want to walk over and introduce yourself or get a selfie. You also want to be a human being you don't want to impose on your celebrity friend. Maybe it would be better just to have the memory in your mind of haing seen them eating a slice of pizza, and leave it at that rather then getting a photographand interrupting their dinner. After all you don't want to be a paparazzi.

We all know what happened with Princess Diana. You don't want to chase the spikenard into a tunnel and kill it just to get a picture. You don't want to have to put to it to death. Yet you are an herbalist and probably paparazzi to boot.

And the teachers not so much a pimp as a teacher wanting to share and preserve the knowledge of the bioregion into the next century. Because as another teacher would begin his daily routine saying to me, "remember, you're one day closer to death". And it's true none of us are going to live forever. is it worth having information and knowledge disappear? 

    There's another story in the ethnobotanical literature. It had to do with a meeting in the 1930s in the Sierra Nevada mountains California.

There were two old men and these two old men were the last speakers of their language. And a noted ethnobotanist got them together so they could talk and he could record them so that their language could be preserved so that their words wouldn't die. At least that's how the ethnobotanist saw it. He was preserving the last of this noble culture, the words their language their history their stories. He assembled the primitive recording devices of that da, he had his students with notebooks present in the room and he brought in the two old men.  He  sat between the men. They looked at each other,  stared at each other for a long time, acknowledged each other, then they cursed one another,  and walked out.

Turns out they were rivals for the affections of a young woman many years ago. And whatever it is that happened meant that they could never speak or even look at each other ever again.  And they kept true to their heart to their culture to their way and never spoke again to one another.

That's how it is with plants you wonder am I doing the right thing? And really I asked the same thing today am I doing the right thing?"

By Paul Manski