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