Pedicularis racemosa, parrot beak

Pedicularis racemosa

Pedicularis racemosa, Leafy parrot beak 

 Leafy Sickletop Lousewort, Parrots Beak Pedicularis 

Selkirk mountain meadows

On the endless medicine road today with Orobanchaceae Pedicularis racemosa. 

https://youtu.be/k1uFBwBuI-g

     Selkirk mts 6000 ft. Known by the names Selkirk Sickletop Lousewort, Parrot's-Beak, leafy lousewort. A perennial from a thick stem-base from thick fibrous roots. Leaves unlike many Pedicularis with a fern like leaf pattern leaves of P. racemosa are entire lance like, deeply toothed opposite. 

Lance leafed toothed opposite

     The flowers in a terminal raceme of several flowers. corollas cream yellow 2-lipped with the bottom in three fused lobes with the upper arched and hooded, in a long curved delicate beak curved down in a graceful arch towards the lower lip. It's range is from salt lake utah and mountains northward into British Columbia. It is found below coniferous forests.

Parrot beak upper lobe curves down

     Its energetics are cooling, slightly bitter, with demulcent sweetness. It can be considered as a skeletal muscle relaxant with mild pain relieving qualities and tends towards nervine consideration with sleep inducing, relaxing qualities. If a person has trouble sleeping due to muscular spasm and pain, whether recent or long standing Pedicularis racemosa is a good candidate. Especially for weekend warriors, after long distance training sessions, cycling, backpacking, running, cross country skiing, weight lifting or heavy repetitive labor splittingwood, stacking bales of hay etc. Also for electro chemical nocturnal muscle spasms and cramps. 

Pedicularis racemosa, leafy Lousewort 

      Pedicularis racemosa due to its unwinding, calming and laid back quality is often thought of as a nighttime herb. Some find it useful as an aphrodisiac where anxiety and tension are interfering with intimacy. Some people describe pedicularis like walking on the moon, dreamy, like your lower limbs are not fully connected. Other people find pedicularis appropriate for day time use as relieving social anxiety and calming the mind, softening the armour. 

    Pedicularis can be used alone or with other herbs for a sleep formula, valeriana and 5% pulsatilla works well, other candidates would be hops, skullcap. Because it has antispasmodic qualities it can be added to cough formulas with cherry bark, Angelica root, arrow leaf balsalm root. For menstrual cramps it goes well with Actea rubra. For hot flashes Angelica, lycopus, and Pedicularis can be effective for some. 

Terminal flower raceme

     One thing to be aware of is there are many kinds of pedicularis species and they are going to interact differently. It's important to develop a relationship with the herbalist to get continuity. You want to experiment with how a particular species is going to unfold for you. I have harvested and made medicine with at least 5 different species, and they are all slightly different, from tiny dwarf species to 6 foot tall giants, from the madrean sky islands to the Selkirks. Important to work with someone who knows and works with it.

Finely toothed leaf edge

     Finally being a parasitic herb connected by root  to specific immediate host plants, it's important to understand these host plants. Pedicularis can be thought of as itself and some quality of the host. Certain plants make the pedicularis unusable and potentially dangerous. Senicio with poisonous alkaloids, Helenium hoopesii with helenalin and other lactones, lupine, and other questionable plants nearby mean that particular pedicularis is unusable and to be left alone. When harvesting it's important to be cognizant of these relationships. In general you want a neutral plant host. This stand of Pedicularis racemosa was growing in open coniferous forest meadow, under sub alpine fir and dwarf huckleberry Vaccinium. 

Endless Medicine Road 

Valeriana scouleri, rambling road

Valerian 

Valerian scouleri lower leaves Midsommer 

     Valeriana scouleri is a 1m/3 foot high perennial growing from a matted thready root mass resembling southern species we looked at earlier. It is at the north limit of range and will mix and merge into V sitchensis down the slope. 
    Valeriana scouleri on the underground endless medicine road show, Valeriana scouleri, is a tall perennial from a matted fibrous root complex whose root presentation is similar to V. acutiloba or V. Arizonica which we studied in other areas. We continue uninterrupted as a group on the endless medicine show. Scouleri is a 90's term and there seems to be a broader move towards sitchensis. The leaves on this bunch have triangular patterning towards the leaf edge tending towards smooth though not toothed. They have wavy leaves and doing a montane thing but the big river is down in the valley so they're doing their thing in this area.

Valeriana flowers

      Like actutiloba and arizonica you'll do a whole plant rather than the commerce-able big taproot stuff to get a whole plant thing going and capture the whole complex complexity nuance. Completely folk  homebrew artisan comparing the grey nondescripts sold powder there is no comparison this is strictly hand to mouth subsistence herbalism. 

roots mass with above ground

      Some people love the scent of wild valeriana and rub fresh leaf and roots on underarms and private parts, while others prefer a more petro chemical amazon google cocacola pepsi walmart standard. And of course anyone thinking a counterculture fragrance movement backed by big pharma, youtube, twitter, cosmopolitan, bank of america, and the national football league is underground is a moron. This montane high meadow montane scent sticks, stinks and permeates. Some people like it others don't. The effect of montane valeriana is variable on the person. If you're wanting xanax without a prescription just find your local ms13 at the church of circle K and buy mexican-zani bars.  
        Fresh valeriana is like cat nip for cats including little domestic mousers and big cats like lions. So if you have a cat they will get into it. Guaranteed when your camped you'll see glowing green translucent eyes peeking out at you from dark shadows checking out your fresh roots so beware, especially if you're sleeping with Angelica, you'll be candy man for bear and a big cat magnet. 


     As far as what V scouleri does, pretty much the same as the other miniature diminutive more southern relatives. In a modern medico police state, televised online doctor paint by number, nurse practitioner with an online virtual degree, connect the dots to illness diagnostic model, valeriana is a poor fit. For a person to person constitutional face to face thing, it's an important plant ally. It works best for cold types like big boned blonde germans not so much for wirey dark skin hot bloodeds. It can wake up the tiger and keep a person awake alnight. So it's important to try this plant during daylight waking hours to see how it acts. Because if it's 1:30AM, you can't sleep, you're tossing and turning and you have to be up at 5am, and you've never tried it before, best to not try it. Use something like a P. bracteosa with A. multifida 90/10 for knock out drops. It's important to understand your own racial biospirit inheritance which manifests as constitutional type when using valeriana. Since for the last 50 or 60 years biospirit has been a fundamental cultural political no-go zone to transition us to a vast consumer tele-police state, valeriana is tough to grind. Since many young people attracted to herbs are in this no-go, thought free zone it takes some subtlety to coax them into a going free grasp of plant medicines in order to nourish well being for their kind. A universal treatment thing based on diagnosis and floating disease is herbal deconstructionism. You are always treating a person, if you can't see the person, you can't facilitate healing, alterative change. 

Stem leaf

     When valeriana is when working best it will calm and soothe, not sedate. A person will rest more effectively. For this person valeriana can be a day time anxiety relief thing, taken before awkward social situations, before intimacy during times when both partners are troubled and scattered and need to come together but are instead ripping apart that thing which nourished and brought them together and so on. On the right person it will stimulate gastric secretions, mildly potentiate heart contraction for more efficient profusion, and calm the brain. On the wrong person it will overstim the heart, you'll be all awake and dressed to the 9's with absolutely no place to go at 2:30AM. Plant, person, place, So when working with these plants it's important to know the plant in and out. You need to be able to see the person in a non-judgemental process and here let's not confuse a virtue signal with seeing the constitutional type and ongoing process, probly best that women do the people stuff and men do the plant stuff. Men tend to be just unaware of people, even that there are people, or that they are themselves, you guessed it, people. Which is why over the last 250,000 years we contracted out birthing babies, cuddly live or die breast feeding, nursing them and raising them to our vagina-ette moms, who now seem to have a monopoly on tact and herbal outreach. We all need to do the place thing, it's the nourishments of being here doing the real work. 

    So any way get to know your valeriana ally friends, don't keep fresh root in your tent, sleep with your glock loaded and pray for rain, blessings y'all. 
     

TwinFlower, North Forest Medicine

TwinFlower, North Forest Medicine. Linnaea borealis -- twinflower formerly considered in the Caprifoliaceae. One of plants my teacher talks about extensively  is twinflower. "Probably one of the more important plants to know, use and understand is twinflower", so true today especially for treating aspects of the so called new illness. 

Considered Honeysuckle family now in its own family. Linnaeaceae, named for a favorite plant of Carl Linnaeus founder of our binomial system and borealis, from Latin Borea, meaning the intrinsic biospiritual principle of cold north shady stormy energy, like a precipitous yin energy, and Balto-Slavic (Lithuanian girė, Old Church Slavonic gora) for "mountain" (also "forest" as if "those living beyond the mountains. You'll find this plant while crawling around as most of us do in the forest. It is a dense mat forming perennial tiny low to the ground moss and tundra plant, twin globe evergreen leaves and twin tiny downward dangling flowers. If you are finding this plant while crawling around you're blessed and sharing those blessings with others is the real work. 

     

     Laying on your belly for hours looking into the tiny forest kingdom world of Linnea borealis it feels as it is. Twin flower is a window into relic remnant places. It is a relic north circumboreal plant from our 100,000 year long ice age, an ice age that we still are in as evidenced by our ethno relic biospiritual honoring of winter dark as a supreme über-holiday. This plant swings and circles the north like the bear constellation in acidic forests of sweden russia, and new world americas. The plant flowers have a deep residual aroma of crushed Prunus serotina leaves and tones of ligusticum sweet root. Barbara Thiem in 2017 wrote a nice paper on Twin Flower", and many are finding this plant vitally important to a veriditas materia medica. Twinflower has a rich chemistry including kaempferol (kaemp- ferol 3-O-glucoside) as well as apigenin and luteolin, coumaric acid, caffeic acid, quercetin, vannillic analogues. Our White native Euro-indigenous folk usage includes a complex of uses that could be understood broadly as pain relief, anti-inflammatory, painful menstrual period stimulation, effective pregnancy tonic, and topical skin eruptions including viral herpes shingles outbreaks and that's how it's been shared. 

     This plant makes an excellent plant to gather and dry for teas and tinctures. It makes an excellent soothing direct application field plant as a topical poultice. Make this plant your go to plant for soothing nourishing salves, and skin cremes. Use it for topical applications for herpes simplex and genital herpes outbreaks and a maintenance formula. It combines with a Hypericum perforatum infused oil topical applied and tincture internal for both genital herpes flare ups, cold sores and herpes zoster outbreaks. Use it for formulas with painful menses low back boggy crampy pain combined with your native cohosh. 

     

     This plant has so many uses what a blessing to have it near you at all times, in all situations. It is said 90% of all our people using native herbs today began studying with students of Jethro Kloss or through Back to Eden. Part of how God has as Jethro Kloss said, in Back to Eden, "I wish to bring to the notice of the general public the untold blessings that our Heavenly Father has provided for all the world. It can be truly said, "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge." Hosea 4:6." Herbalists agree and acknowledge God the Father as present in our Bible, made a remedy for all our ills if we seek out Him. So our practice becomes with twinflower, being in the right place, at the right time, doing the right thing, in the right way, to do no harm and offer herbal knowledge to all because “but don’t forget to be friendly to outsiders; for in so doing, some people, without knowing it, have entertained angels.”  (Heb)‬ ‭13:2‬ ‭CJB‬‬

Jethro Kloss, Back to Eden 1939

Field Notes from class field study 

Hildegard Bingen: Study lecture Notes

Twinflower (Linnaea borealis L.) – plant species of potential medicinal properties BARBARA THIEM1* ELISABETH BUK-BERGE2

1Department of Pharmaceutical Botany and Plant Biotechnology Poznań University of Medical Sciences

Św. Marii Magdaleny 14

61-861 Poznań, Poland

2The Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research** Postbox 8119

Dep. 0032 Oslo, Norway