Prunus serotina, The Cherry

Prunus serotina, The Cherry 

Prunus emarginata, Prunus serotina, bitter cherry, choke cherry, (yes the cherries are quite bitter with an intriguing sweetness, almond, cherry taste Rosaceae (Rose family)

     Wild Prunus choke cherry species are highly variable from place to place, and i'm sure there's a lot of communication via pollen in the cherry community. Botanists and books will often give various names to the same species, or different varieties at different locations. They are for our purposes useful the same, not the same as far as names, same with regard to herbal usage. 

     Yet there are some common characteristics, it's a small tree, with deciduous leaves, the bark has a distinct straight line light colored notching that circles the older branches and trunk looking like it was applied with a stencil. It tends to like water, here in a seep high on a mountain at 5000ft, though not always visible flowing water, although it can be in a riparian plant community. It tends to fall down and resprout where it touched down. It can form thickets.  The leaves are opposite and can have tiny serrated edges or not even on the same tree. 

     Cherry bark has been used because, it has for most of us an intriguing inherently pleasant evocative fragrance, i haven't met anyone who doesn't like it but there probably are some. I believe it goes deep into the  collective biospirit muscle memory of northern eurasian people's for whom cherry blossom fragrance signal the ending of winter, fertility, the increase in daylight and renewed abundance. The scent of bitter cherry bark is intense and resembles cherry almonds honey sweetness. 

    The scent is due partly to cyanogenic glycosides, hydrocyanic acids, coumarin and inherent flavonoids. Yes a cyanide compound that has a sedative quality that calms the cough reflex in aggressive nighttime coughs and cough formulas. It has been used for hundreds of generations and will continue to be used by those of use who do such things. 

      Personally i am here gathering wild cherry after fruiting, after first frost, which has occurred here at 5000 ft in northern mountains. This will vary from place to place. Basically gather in autumn fall, when the cherry fruit is red or purple black depending on species, not during early spring when in flower, some people wait until the leaves fall off. However i wouldn't hesitate to gather wild cherry in the spring while in flower, using fresh bark, leaf and flower in roughly equal portions to utilize as a nervine, for use in anxiety and agitation as a specialized formula for sleep, and calmness. I guess everyone can chose what to worry about, and i chose not to worry about a plant that has been used for thousands of years by people wherever they lived. A fresh whole plant tincture of wild cherry is quite strong as a relaxant in agitated persons, and you don't need to use a lot, only 5-10 drops. It is useful to have a whole plant flower, leaf and bark available for situations of out of control emotions crying, sobbing, and the like. You'll have to decide if you're up for using something like that. Other people will of course disagree and that's fine as far as i'm concerned. Wild cherry is safe and as a specialized limited batch type of thing for extreme coughing fits and high levels of anxiety it's useful to have on hand when these situations arise. Rather than pop a xanax or benzo, ritalin or amphetamine salts for children and that sort of thing, highly addictive substances, i feel wild cherry used in this way is harm reduction. Our bodies as biospirits have ingested rose family plants from beginningless time and have internal means of detoxifying these substances in our biospiritual memory rather than say a benzo. Again if you're on this path then you're going to gravitate towards it.
      Utilize small straight branches pruning at the point where the beach meets the trunk stem. Then peel off the bark, sometimes in a straight branch you can make a cut length wise and peel off the bark in one piece or in long wider strips, which is good if you are drying the bark as this way it will last longer without losing its aromatic quality. It's a good idea if making tincture to make a straight fresh plant tincture FPT 1:2, or DPT 1:5 50% of wild cherry bark and add 10% glycerine so tannins don't compete for the medicinal constituents. It's also best to make a make a straight cherry tincture with 10% glycerine, then add cherry to formula rather than mixing all the herbs and roots together in one jar. This way you can make a formula by adding the various root, bark, leaf tinctures  together in small batches and avoid making a big batch of limited use formula or making a failed formula that you can't salvage. 

     Prunus spp has cardio reductive relaxing qualities for rapid pulse which accompanies acute lung congestion and coughing fits. In a cough formula it can be combined with an aromatic antimicrobial Ligusticum Tishwoof, Abies grandis, pine resin, balsalm root, angelica, grindelia, sweetened with honey, or sweet root, licorice.

Tishwoof osha root

 A good strong wild cherry tincture can be added in small amounts like sweet root, licorice, angelica to sweeten formulas taste. Although you have to be careful because some flavors can get heightened by this mixing, for instance Larrea tridentata is Larrea tridentata and no mixing is going to lessen its inherent taste. 

https://youtu.be/yPNB27dRQys

  Description of the Cherry Tree in the South West

   Prunus serotina, the wild cherry of the western mountains, is a valuable part of my Materia Medica. Prunus serotina refers to ‘prunus’ the greek word ‘prunos’-plum or cherry and ‘serotina’ the latin word ‘serus’- late maturing fruit. Ironically it blooms in early spring in the mountains of the south west. It is found in wet moist north facing canyons. It has striking beautiful flower and adorns the tree conspicuously with white dreamy blossoms.

      Prunus serotina is a member of the Rose or Rosaceae family. In the southwest US it is often straggly and srubby, with deciduous leaves bright green above, when the leaves are crushed it has a distinctive ‘almond’ fragrance with a hint of cherry. When the tree is crowded it can grow tall and slender with a short life span. The leaves have a ponted tip, finely serrated, alternate, simple. The flowers are showy and move fast in the spring, occurring before the leaves have grown to full size. They are white on a extended raceme and are so fragrant you can sometimes smell the fragrance wafting on the wind before sighting the tree. The bark is distinctive, when young there are small arcs of grey circling the diameter of the smooth shiny trunk. When older the bark takes on a mottled grey rough exterior, looking very different than the smooth bark of younger spindly trees.

      It occurs in North America widely in the eastern states. I have walked through the extensive distinctive deciduous forests with maple in the Alleghey mountains in western Pennsylvania. There in Pennsylvania it presents as a large great tree of dimension and size. In the western region of Arizona and New Mexico, it is a mid- to higher elevation shrub to small tree, ocassionaly getting to size but rare to see. Often found in shady canyons with Quercus (oaks) in moist riparian zones.

      The bark of wild cherry was listed in the US Pharmacopeia from 1820- 1970. It was used extensively by Native North American people across the range of its growth. The early pioneers learning and interacting with these people likewise prized wild cherry bark for coughs and as a mild sedative. It has an uninterrupted use by folk herbalists, such as myself into the present day.

      The familiar taste and flavor of wild cherry bark is used in the familiar cough drops and cough syrup. Dr DeWitt’s cough and cold syrup from 1930 contained horehound, tar, wild cherry, glycerine, alcohol 5%, and gum Arabic. It was marketed by W J Parker Company. Smith Brothers developed a similar cherry cough drop in 1928, the original flavor although secret, had a high licorice extract content. In addition to being the active ingredient cherry bark also took on a dubious role in disguising a wide range of ingredients from, laudanum, a liquid opiod to codeine, heroin and cocaine in patent medicines in the early part of the 20th century.

       The bark of Prunus serotina contains a wide range of active medicinal chemicals including: Amygdalin: anti-inflammatory, antitussive, anti spasmodic, expectorant
Gallic acid: analgesic, anti flu, astringent, Bronchodilator
Prunasin:cyanogenic, aldose reductase inhibitor, uterosedative, bronchorelaxant
Scopolletin: anti asthmatic, cns-stimulant,
 Tannin: hepatoprotective, antiviral, anticancer,

 Dr Duke’s Phytochemical and ethnobotanical database
https://phytochem.nal.usda.gov/phytochem/plants/show/1597#act-42946-close 

Cherry in Herbal lore

      “The cherry as a single image was frequently the love-cherry;as such it survives today in American slang as ‘the maidenhead’ . Erotic connotation was there for the makar to use if he wished. But the cherry was heavenly fruit. It was the object of craving in the Mother of God before Christ was born-in the well known ‘Cherry tree Carol’ that is a variation on the early legend of Mary and the date palm on the flight to Egypt…There was that in the nature of the cherry, the white and red of it’s flesh and juice, that could eloquently figure the body and blood of Christ, of the sacrament.”
 -Quote
Song, Dance and Poetry of the Court of Scotland Under King James VI By Helena Mennnie Shire, Cambridge University Press, 2010

      “I suppose there are few but know this tree, for its fruit's sake; and therefore I shall spare writing a description thereof.

Place : For the place of its growth, it is afforded room in every orchard.

Government and virtues : It is a tree of Venus. Cherries, as they are of different tastes, so they are of different qualities. The sweet pass through the stomach and the belly more speedily, but are of little nourishment; the tart or sour are more pleasing to an hot stomach, procure appetite to meat, to help and cut tough phlegm, and gross humours; but when these are dried, they are more binding to the belly than when they are fresh, being cooling in hot diseases, and welcome to the stomach, and provokes urine. The gum of the Cherry-tree, desolved in wine is good for a cold, cough, and hoarseness of the throat; mends the colour in the face, sharpens the eyesight, provokes appetite, and helps to break and expel the stone, and dissolved, the water thereof is much used to break the stone, and to expel gravel and wind.”

-Quote

Nicholas Culpepper The Complete Herbal 1653

 Sir Cleges, Knight of the round table and the Cherry:

      Sir Cleges was a knight of the round table. The story of Sir Cleges, translated by Jessie L Weston, 2000, Sir Cleges through his generosity and gifting to the less fortunate became poor. Gradually after a time living in poverty he was forgotten by those to whom his generosity shined and by and by he was left uninvited to the King Uther Pendragon’s palace and court. Uther Pendragon, the father of King Authur was having a feast at Christmastide. Sir Cleges was again univited and forgotten. Not without gifts he took comfort from his ever faithful, loving wife Dame Clarys. Sir Cleges as a devout Christian had pledged his feal loyality both to King Pendragon and the Queen of Heaven, the Most Blessed Virgin.

He sought out the interseccion of the Virgin Mary. While he was praying under a cherry tree at Christmas tide, he looked up and and lifting his head was struck on the head by a cherry branch thick and heavy with fruit in late December. “
      "Dear God,” quoth he, “what manner of berry may this be that grows at this time of the year? At this season I know not that any tree should bear fruit.”” Sir Cleges presented the cherries to his wife in gratitude for comforting him and then decided to take them to the King Pendragon, father of King Arthur. After first being rejected by the keepers of the court he persevered and was able to present them to the king. The king rewarded Sir Cleges with gifts and a return of his prestige among his peers with a place in the court.

 American Eclectics and wild Cherry Bark:

      Within the American Eclectics, cherry bark was esteemed as a complex remedy with a wide variety of application, in the American Eclectic practice of Medicine, Volume 2, by Ichabod Gibson Jones, 1858. “
      “I have also usually administered at the same time tablespoonful doses, two or three times a day, of a decoction of wild-cherry bark and sanguinaria, which, in cases connected with debility of the stomach, will rarely fail to produce highly beneficial effects, and should be continued for some time after the healthy secretion of the liver has been restored. Its action upon the biliary secretion obviates the necessity for constantly resorting to cathartics, and it should never be neglected except in those cases presenting evidence of gastric irritation, when the blood-root should be omitted and the cherry bark be given alone.”
        Ichabod Jones was writing here of cherry bark given as a treatment for jaundice and a stuck liver. Another Eclectic formula using wild cherry bark, this one from Lorenzo ElbridgeJ ones, The American Eclectic Materia Medica, 1863, was to combine Berberis bark, Aspen bark and wild cherry bark.” Infuse Barberry bark, Wild-cherry bark and American Aspen, four ounces of each, in one gallon of cider for forty-eight hours in a covered vessel, maintaining a gentle heat: one gill may be taken four or five times daily, in jaundice and torpid states of the liver.”
      Prunus serotina bark is not used much now for jaundice or liver issues. Yet these 19th century eclectic’s use of it in this way bears careful consideration for the modern herbalist.
      Ichabod Jones, describes Prunus Spp bark as ‘aromatic tonic, astringent and sedative.’ Both indicated in irritable stomach and nervous system. In addition he describes it for uses in chronic bronchitis, phithisis which is an old term for tuberculosis. Frequently with what we would now call ‘shortness of breath’, as occurs in COPD and exacerbations of asthma, and influenza there is anxiety.      
       Wild cherry bark is useful then as now in addressing anxiety connected to breathing. Wild cherry extract is a valuable ingredient in my materia medica. I wild craft it from the pristine moist mountains here in the southwest bioregion of mountains and Sky islands. I process it immediately in organic cane alcohol to preserve its medicinal aromatic properties. I offer it as a pure fresh plant tincture and in formulas.
      It combines well with Aralia racemosa, spikenard, Osha, Ligusticum porteri, American Licorice, Glycyrrhiza lepidota, Monarda spp, Lomatium, Asclepias spp and other southwest bioregional respiratory herbs. In addition it lends itself to being an ally, not only for coughs and respiratory issues.
     “Therapy—The tonic influence of this agent is more markedly apparent when it is administered in disease of the respiratory apparatus of a subacute or chronic character. It is not given during the active period of acute cases, but is of value during the period of convalescence. It is a common remedy in the treatment of chronic coughs, especially those accompanied with excessive expectoration. It is valuable in whooping-cough. The syrup is used as a menstruum for the administration of other remedies in this disease. It is excellent also in reflex cough—the cough of nervous patients without apparent cause. The syrup may be used persistently in phthisis, for the administration of many other agents which seem to be indicated during the course of the disease. Wild cherry is popular in the treatment of mild cases of palpitation, especially those of a functional character, or from reflex causes. Palpitation from disturbed conditions of the stomach is directly relieved by it. It is said to have a direct tonic influence upon the heart when the muscular structure of that organ is greatly weakened, where there is dilatation or valvular insufficiency, especially if induced by prolonged gastric or pulmonary disease.”
–John Uri Lloyd

       Prunus serotina resonates deep into the body energizing the largest gland in the body, the liver. Especially in terms of torpor and stagnation. It’s interesting to see herbalists today describe cherry bark almost exclusively for cough and respiratory issues. Both the eclectic physicians acknowledge this use yet acknowledge its use internally not connected with cough. Perhaps the best way of describing these broader range of uses is the description of wild cherry bark as a blood purifyer and tonic. Native American tribes also used the bark topically for sores, internally for diarrhea and digestive issues and for ‘old’ coughs, and during the first stages of a woman’s labor. The eclectic physicians of America felt strongly its use in jaundice/liver issues in addition to respiratory problems, along with cough and anxiety related to shortness of breath.
      “As a remedy for dyspepsia it has many advocates. It is a tonic to the stomach improving digestion by stimulating the action of the gastric glands. It soothes irritability of the stomach from whatever cause. Although the properties of a nerve sedative are not ascribed to this agent, general nervous irritation is soothed by its administration, nervous irritability of the stomach and of the respiratory organs is allayed, and a tonic influence is imparted to the central nervous system.” –John Uri Lloyd
-Quote
 American Materia Medica, Therapeutics and Pharmacognosy JOHN URI LLOYD, Ph.M, 1915

      “The officinal portion is the bark, and that of the root should be preferred to that of the trunk and branches. It should be renewed annually, as its properties are much impaired by age and drying.” “Properties and Uses.—Wild-cherry bark has a tonic and stimulating influence on the digestive apparatus, and a simultaneous sedative action on the nervous system and circulation. It is, therefore, valuable in all those cases where it is desirable to give tone and strength to the system, without, at the same time, causing too great an action of the heart and blood vessels, as, during convalescence from pleurisy, pneumonia, acute hepatitis, and other inflammatory and febrile diseases. It is also useful in hectic fever, cough, colliquative diarrhea, some forms of dyspepsia, whooping-cough, irritability of the nervous system, etc., and has been found an excellent palliative in phthisis.”
 -Quote
The American Dispensatory, By John King

       “Prunus Virginiana— Pruni Virginianae—Wild Cherry. U. S. P. Origin.—The bark, collected in autumn, of Prunus serotina Ehr, a large forest tree indigenous in North America. Description and Properties.—It is met with in curved pieces or irregular fragments -fa inch (2 Mm.) or more thick; outer surface greenish-brown or yellowish-brown, smooth and somewhat glossy, marked with transverse scars. If the bark is collected from the old wood and deprived of the corky layer, the outer surface is nut-brown and uneven; inner surface somewhat striate or fissured. Upon maceration in water it develops a distinct bitter-almond odor. Taste astringent, aromatic, and bitter. It contains a volatile oil, hydrocyanic acid, tannin, a bitter glucoside, resin, etc. Dose.—i-i drachm (2.0-4.0 Gm.).”
 -Quote
 A TEXT-BOOK MATERIA MEDICA, THERAPEUTICS, AND PHARMACOLOGY. GEORGE FRANK BUTLER, Ph.g.. M.D., , 1896

       “The cherry as a single image was frequently the love-cherry;as such it survives today in American slang as ‘the maidenhead’ . Erotic connotation was there for the makar to use if he wished. But the cherry was heavenly fruit. It was the object of craving in the Mother of God before Christ was born-in the well known ‘Cherry tree Carol’ that is a variation on the early legend of Mary and the date palm on the flight to Egypt…There was that in the nature of the cherry, the white and red of it’s flesh and juice, that could eloquently figure the body and blood of Christ, of the sacrament.”
 -Quote
Song, Dance and Poetry of the Court of Scotland Under King James VI By Helena Mennnie Shire, Cambridge University Press, 2010

       “I have also usually administered at the same time tablespoonful doses, two or three times a day, of a decoction of wild-cherry bark and sanguinaria, which, in cases connected with debility of the stomach, will rarely fail to produce highly beneficial effects, and should be continued for some time after the healthy secretion of the liver has been restored. Its action upon the biliary secretion obviates the necessity for constantly resorting to cathartics, and it should never be neglected except in those cases presenting evidence of gastric irritation, when the blood-root should be omitted and the cherry bark be given alone.”
-Quote
American Eclectic practice of Medicine, Volume 2, by Ichabod Gibson Jones, 1858

 Felter, H. W. The Eclectic Materia Medica, Pharmacology and Therapeutics, J.K. Scudder, 1922 -Quote The American Eclectic Materia Medica, by Lorenzo Elbridge Jones, 1863 “Infuse Barberry bark, Wild-cherry bark and American Aspen, four ounces of each, in one gallon of cider for forty-eight hours in a covered ves- sel, maintaining a gentle heat: one gill may be taken four or five times daily, in jaundice and torpid states of the liver.”

 References  
    A TEXT-BOOK MATERIA MEDICA, THERAPEUTICS, AND PHARMACOLOGY. GEORGE FRANK BUTLER, Ph.g.. M.D., , 1896.

    American Eclectic Practice of Medicine, Volume 2, by Ichabod Gibson Jones, 1858.

 American Materia Medica, Therapeutics and Pharmacognosy JOHN URI LLOYD, Ph.M, 1915.

 "BRIT - Native American Ethnobotany Database." BRIT - Native American Ethnobotany Database. Accessed September 29, 2016. http://naeb.brit.org/uses/search/?string=Prunus serotina.

 By William and Robert Whistlecraft, of Stowmarket, in Suffolk, Harness and Collar-Makers. Intended to Comprise the Most Interesting Particulars Relating to King Arthur and His Round Table. Bath: H. E. Carrington, 1842.

"Post-Medieval Arthurian Literature in English (Other than Fiction): A Preliminary Bibliography | Robbins Library Digital Projects." Post-Medieval Arthurian Literature in English (Other than Fiction): A Preliminary Bibliography | Robbins Library Digital Projects. Accessed September 29, 2016.

http://d.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/text/lupack-post-medieval-arthurian-literature.

Culpeper, Nicholas. The English Physician Enlarged: With Three Hundred and Sixty-nine Medicines, Made of English Herbs, That Were Not in Any Impression Until This. Being an Astrologo-physical Discourse of the Vulgar Herbs of This Nation, ... By Nich. Culpepper. .. London: printed for W. Baynes, 1799.

 Jo. Conversation, Field Notes. Tucson, AZ, 2015. John Slattery, Sonoran Desert Apprentice

Mich. Conversations. Silver City, New Mexico, 2015. Field talk Michael Cottingham, Voyage Botanical Herbal Medicine Program

 Felter, H. W. The Eclectic Materia Medica, Pharmacology and Therapeutics, J.K. Shudder, 1922.

Charles W. Kane, Medicinal Plants Western Mountain States, Lincoln Town Press, 2017

 Moore, Michael. Medicinal Plants Mountain West. 2012

 Prunus Virginiana— Pruni Virginianae—Wild Cherry. U. S. P. Song,

Dance and Poetry of the Court of Scotland Under King James VI By Helena Mennnie Shire, Cambridge University Press, 2010. The American Eclectic Materia Medica, by Lorenzo Elbridge Jones, 1863.

Oplopanax, Deeper devils club

       Going deeper into Oplopanax horridus, devils club. 
                

Oplopanax horridus 

Going still further into our premier Cascadia North West polycrest herb. This treasure is in the Araliaceae family the same family as Panax ginseng Chinese ginseng and Panax quinquefolius American ginseng, Aralia racemosa, spikenard, Aralia nudicaulis wild sarsparilla, and probably could be understood as having qualities of all the these plus the energizing, alterative, and adaptogenic qualities of Eleuthero senticosus or Siberian ginseng.
    

       These plants have been used wherever found, in the east or west for endless times as ways to mitigate and navigate tough situations in the body. Currently they are understood in terms of dealing with stress in the body, aging and restoring in an alterative manner. In addition it has strong aromatic warming qualities like a respiratory herb. There are three species in the genus Oplopanax, devil’s club is the only species in North America occurring in the Cascadia bioregion. 

   https://youtu.be/7KhWU_ranPc

    Opolo means armored, from hoplon meaning a weapon or club,which it kinda is I suppose, standing straight leafless in the early spring with significant thorny extended glochids. Panax, meaning panacea, something that heals everything, a universal remedy. Horridus means hairy, spiny, bristling, shaggy, prickly, to bristle with fear, shudder. So an armoured club, a hairy, prickly, fierce and terrible, shocking, awe inspiring weapon. Weapon in the sense of remedio or remedy, a way back into balance and homeostasis for the body, heart, mind and psyche. 

https://youtu.be/kpWEPf30Cak

        Oplopanax was etched in the culture and place of persons in Cascadia from the Pacific coast of Alaska, British Columbia and into it’s southern range into Washington, the Idaho panhandle and western Montana. Oplopanax defines Cascadia and to know it and use it is to be here as person. The medicinal usage was co-existent with the concept of restorative balance inherent in the plant and made available to the the person engaged with the plant. 
      

Oplopanax tip first green

    To watch it emerge in the spring after snow melt along moist verdant creeks, with western red cedar and paper birch, with green tips on erect 5 to 6 foot spiky barbed leafless stalks is to engage directly with the cycle of life returning after a long cold dreary winter. The re-emergence of oplopanax each spring is the eternal story of life in the north, in Cascadia. It is a northern plant with a northern story. A story that is fundamentally unavailable in the equatorial lowlands of the south. To watch the huge palmate leaves green out in late spring, flower in mid summer, then fruit in terminal pyramidal clusters, with bright red berries is to be in this northern place as person. 

      Although unrelated botanically with plants like Osha, Ligusticum porteri, bear root in the great mid continent southwestern mountains of Colorado and New Mexico, Larrea tridentate, Tsu’g’uh, creosote bush, chaparrel, in the great basin, through to Sonora and Chihuaha deserts, Amenopsis californica, yerba santa, in the lowlands of the south west from Utah south to Arizona, California and Sonora, Bursera microphyla, elephant tree, like wise in Sonora and, far south California, Arizona, Baha California- all these plants were understood as the most important therapeutic , medicinally active and protective plants by the people in their bioregion. Oplopanax is in the same story frame in Cascadia. 

     I can remember conversations with T’ohno O’dom Robert Juan (name changed) regarding Tsu’g’uh, how he explained it was a plant that could cure him, yet he was unable to use it because he has in the throes of alcohol detox.

Tsu’g’uh in flower

I brought him some growing nearby, he held it in his hand, saying softly, “Tsu’g’uh”, over and over and he had me repeat it back to him, till I could say it correctly. He asked me how I knew about it, he then explained how he could use it if, he could just stay off booze for a week or two. How it could heal him. I explained how I used it, and we talked about an elder we both knew, Stella Tucker who had passed away three years ago. We talked plant story as we could in the different situations life had encased us with so much incredible baggage. 
     

Stella Tucker 

     I brought two cups of hot water, one for me and one for, I was going to dip it and then we would drink. When I want to use Larrea tridentate, that’s how I use it. I quickly dip a small green fresh branchlet in hot water, then drink it down. It’s a sweet highly aromatic plant and any more then a little bit is too much. He said, “No, I’m not clean yet, it could make me very sick. You drink it.” So I dipped it in the cup and it turned a light green, smelling like rain, smelling like the monsoon summer rains that drift over the basins with life giving rain...
     

Tsu’g’uh in springtime

     He gestured, and I brought the cup closer, Robert smelled it and said, “Tsu’g’uh, say it.” He said, “Not bad, go head and drink it for me.”, Which I did, he promised me he would get better and to a place where he could use it again. We talked about different things about the plant and what it meant to him and how you could use it to get back to a place a balance. How to pray with the plant and get things done in your life by coming back to it. The way he described it, it amplified good intentions. It made it possible to bridge difficult situations, like loss. Things I won’t share here, however the framework of working with these plants was clear, and that is not a medicinal or medical framework, it’s about survival and continuing with your journey above ground. Continuing with my heart beating journey above ground because living is a yes or no, stay or go question that is about accountability and integrity.
    

Oplopanax stalk

    Just as there is no way to quantify the uses of these other polycrest panacea herbs, there is no way to categorize the importance medicinally, spiritually, as an aspect of overcoming, enduring through difficult times. It is with these plants that one develops a personal connection over time.

https://youtu.be/QFuAcMzsJLQ

       With regard to Oplopanax, the moment you think you understand Oplopanax, the moment you think you can put it in your herbal basket of understanding, you’ll find it’s uses and applications are beyond your previous understanding.. It’s a plant that takes a life to grasp, then your life is over, so it becomes a generational plant to share with those who will come after you. It’s a plant to see and use in health and in sickness. Not only sickness of the body but sickness of the heart, dis-ease of the soul. It needs to be met with in youth, middle age and old age, because that’s how huge, vast and complex it is. 

     Habitat: where it grows? Where it is and where it isn’t defines the limits of Cascadia. In general though Oplopanax prefers wet, moist, old cedar forest streamside riparian environments. Relatively low elevation, it doesn’t grow at the top of mountains. Yet with living things, the rule is lifeforce, greening, and it will grow where it will. I have found it at 4800 feet and towards the bottom creeks. It grows on the small feeder creeks fed by snowmelt. It can handle direct sun but direct sun is relative above the 48N parallel. It’s a northern sun at low angle even in the height of summer, filtered by the dense red western cedar forest. As such whatever Cascadia is and contains then that is where Oplopanax grows and thrives in deep rich undisturbed forest riparian places, as a clannsh thicket. It loses it’s leaves during the late Autumn, they brown, hang down, signally the end of summer and return of dark winter, with low sun that doesn’t gett far above the horizon, then snow. The more than a foot wide plamately lobed bright shiny leaves drop off. Oplopanax then merges into deciduous with a woody stem, covered in prickly pointed pricklers. Different than say a cholla spine. You can pull out cholla with a letherman pliars or tweasers. These are more like extended, enlarged prickly pear glochids, that don’t have anything to grab, yet they do pierce the skin. Apart from warm pine pitch which produces its own sticky mess, the best way to remove the pricklers is not to get pricked. 

      https://youtu.be/GPXo1beomak

    Later in spring the plant energy swings in a pendulum like an in out breath. The energy from the roots moves upward into the thorny stalk, producing a green bud at the tip, it leafs out with alternate deeply palmate with 7-9 lobes unevenly toothed margins, leaves are deep green and up to a 35cm or about a foot 12 inches wide. Flowers are typical of the Aralaceae family, resembling the celery or parsley family, Umbelliferae Apiacea family of aromatic flowering plants. A parasol umbrella cluster of  small whitish green flowers, with five petals in an elaborate pyramidal terminal cluster, later with bright red berries resembling Actea rubra, red bane berry clusters. 

Palmate leaf

       The dominant culture produces a paradigm of understanding that seeks as its operating agenda an internalized public monitor and throttle on experience. Like driving a car with a limiter on the throttle and engine, so that only a certain speed can be reached. Perception becomes reality, in a controlled manner which seeks to control behavior to consumer choices.  Living in the consumer terrarium becomes driving a car on organized maintained roadways with predictable outcomes. Walking on foot opens us to movement in all directions and has been the previous dominant way of understanding the world. When walking one can go in many directions, stepping off the tracked roadway into the wild.

       The modern obligations of living doesn’t do well for epic plant story that came from the time before. Oplopanax was the plant, person and place, there being none else to compare it. There was no place without oplopanax, no plant and no persons in the place. It was all or nothing world. It’s hard to duplicate that situation. We live in a liberalism of choice where everything is up for grabs. Modern experience is defined by variable place where everything is for sale and available as a consumer choice. These choices become obligations to organize experience. The situation of choiceless being in a specific bioregion is hard to come by. There is so little time for wandering cedar streambanks being in and of a place. Yet that situation of being wrapped and trapped in a choiceless bounded whole remains alive as the whole body, the actual body right here and right now.  Our bodies betray use with overt limitation. Our bodies can only inhabit the place and time they are in actuality. 

 Not only are we encased and defined by a biospirit, bio-racial genetic heritage coming from our heroic resilient ancestors, there is also the ultimate reality of mortality and death. Death is the ultimate determination of place. Death is the inescapable motif that unfolds and surrounds us. 

     The modern consumer choice zoo has no death or mortality to determine perspective. We can watch immortal un-dead film cinema heroes in eternal fertile youth talk, dance and act on the screen. We internalize this aesthetic as our own when it can never be our own. We are lured into a forgetfulness of our ultimate ground of being. We have entered a bargain with our regime keepers who have established a state and an upper ruling class who maintain their elaborate lifestyle and transfer of power and wealth while we enjoy relative safety and the crumbs that fall off their table in the form of virtual electro reality mind numbing entertainments. Staring into the formalized official sponsored blue light glow of the television, intranet and other new gadgets and trinkets, we forget our basic most fundamental reality, mortality, death and living in a single place, cohabiting a specific bioregion. 

        The mind and thought process is often tilted, guided towards the familiar which is often second or third hand theories and fake-news revolving around a psycho-medical framework that is hammered again and again as truth by everyday conversations by fellow inmates on the ward and tends toward a cultural framework which is not conducive to using these plants most effectively. Even attempting to go to the plants becomes a clandestine strange arrangement due to ownership of land by various agencies of the state. In the past before the forced yoke of industrialism fueled by colonial spheres of influence, a person had certain rights to encounter and work the land. The plants were there, you could negotiate an entitlement of access. Today there is little negotiation because the plants themselves become opportuntied freedom. The medical police surveillance state allows precious few moments unwatched. Plant medicines are ways to maintain your own health, to heal and address disease outside the mode of official doctors and licensed psycho-medico-police practitioners.  “Medice cur ate ipsum”, as physician Luke wrote as Jesus speaking, Yeshua, ‘Yaweh saves’, spoke,Luke 4:23 “Ye will surely say unto me this proverb, ’Physician, heal thyself’: whatsoever we have done in Capernum, do also here in thy country””, and at a certain point we must heal ourselves. Acquiring the plant, person, place experience is the way of liberation leading to a connection to place. Disconnection to place is the one truth of modern psycho-medico-police state ethics. Keeping us off the land in a intranet shelter in place lockdown mode, is the standard of control to throttle us into monotonous, meaningless consumer choices. 

       

Roots and stems

   “On the appointed day, everyone is ordered to stay indoors: it is forbidden to leave on pain of death. The syn- dic himself comes to lock the door of each house from the out- side; he takes the key with him and hands it over to the inten- dant of the quarter; the intendant keeps it until the end of the quarantine…Inspection functions ceaselessly” (Panopticsm from Discipline and punish:the Birth of the Prison by Michel Foucault)

     Michel Foucault (1926-1984) a French philosopher wrote “Dicipline and Punish” in 1975, wrote about the development of imprisoning individuals that speaks to our current situation of culture mandatory and consumer society that has been unfolding in epic proportions recently. Foucault wrote of three primary techniques of control: hierarchical observation, normalizing judgement, and the examination. Control of people is power, that power of the state is maintained by merely observing them continuously in a continuous surveillance. 1975 could only vaguely imagine the draconian self surveillance pact that makes up so much of what we do. In a word probably, portable smart cell phone would describe a primary reality unknown and probably unimaginable to Foucault or anyone else for that matter. Observation is not only what is done but also what is not done, to correct deviant behavior. Foucault examined Jeremiah Bentham’s Panopticon, a territory or place which criminals could be watched and supervised at all times, where prisoners are continuously monitored can be applied to any social form, prison, hospital, mental ward, a school or university, and taken further to the family, the home, the person. The goal is docility,whether a child in school, a soldier, a prison inmate, a work environment, the goal and practice is continuous watching for the purpose of social control. In our sense it becomes herding consumer choices into relatively mandatory choices, where we enforce ourselves by continuous watching. The idea of a universal prison state of consumerism transforms the person to object, a dangerous person is one living outside the range of surveillance, opting out can take many forms but the result is a deplatforming of the person. In a world that lives by an electronic social media with near continuous watching, punishing becomes deplatforming the person from social media participation. A person becomes a defacto non-person with no overt incarceration or punishment, punishment is by placing a child in continuous from birth monitoring with various baby monitoring cameras and microphones, bestowed by loving parents and care givers who have internalized the watchful as normalacy. Watching others watching others and recording the event with personal handheld video recording devices is not a sign of health. It is the closing in on the bio-spiritual person who furthers his gene material via biological sex, ending forever the uniqueness of a person through biospirit into a hybrid regime controlled bio-techno state controlled being. Nation is fundamentally different than state, as family is fundamentally different than state funded day care. If your biological children are cared for in state regime licensed day cares and schools they at a certain point inevitably will have more allegiance to the state regime than to you. This is evidenced by the generation who houses their aging parents and grandparents in elder care. The life of a nation is a biospirit culture of family and tribe and the face to face transmission of culture from great grandparents, to grandparents to parents to child. When that process is interrupted for whatever reason, biospirit, culture, tribe, family is erased. 
     Biospirit, culture, tribe and family may be energized by youth but it is a disciplined energy. It may be transmitted by sex but it is not capable of replication solely through that sexual energy. What we have today are regime educated children arranging bricks and then calling those aesthetically pleasing brick sculpture, liberal art school arrangements, workable architectural structures. Clearly throwing bricks together in a pile is not a liveable structure. To construct a building with bricks requires first a foundation footwall. Without foundation work for a brick structure, the structure will collapse. Which is what we are witnessing today, a collapse of the visible structure of society due to foundational neglect. Even at our most disgusting modern cultural moments during the 30 year war 1915-1945, the armies while killing had a foundational structure to organize their terrors. Now all we have is their inherited weapons randomly fired for no apparent purpose, with no recognized legitimate leadership, the only goal being erasure. 

       Alexander Dugin in “Thoughts During the Plague no6- Discipine and Punish” writes about Michel Foucaults “Discipline and Punish”, and the constant supervision and the deprivation of privacy. The continuous observation is a form of humiliation. A person is reduced to an animal in a zoo. Dugin writes about these concepts in relation to the recent so-called pandemic with the risk of infection everywhere. Judging by how easily we morphed into a lockdown shelter in place society supervised and implemented by a non-elected medico-psycho-police state, where many parts of our fiercely won, and previously highly valued constitution were suddenly voluntarily suspended. The right to assemble, conduct business,  exercise religion, simple acts of appearing in a public space were suddenly gone till further notice. Dugin writes that, “Gradually, this structure (the prison) projects itself onto all of us, not just the jailer…Look at what is happening…people suspected of being infected with coronavirus are treated like dogs, aliens…the most heinous hygienic racism…relegated to life in the panopticon, left to rely on the doctor, the policeman, the military, the psychiatrist…” 
         

Oplopanax early spring

     This situation described as Alexander Dugin described it of a continuous surveillance police state, resonated with me because just prior to my return to Oplopanax Cascadia,   I worked as a psychiatric RN nurse in a fairly strange voluntary/non-voluntary facility. Like the popular song by the Eagles, ‘Hotel California’, “You can check out any time you like, But you can never leave.”, a person would come in via two ways, as a voluntary person through the front door, or brought in by law enforcement often in chains or hand cuffs, through a locked sally port. Fairly frequently the person was high on a combination of methamphetamine, high grade marijuana, benzos, MDMA, amphetamine, heroin, fentanyl would be immediately injected involuntarily with a combo of haloperidol, lorazepam, diphenhydramine, chlorpromazine, or olanzapine. However there were others coming in voluntary who soon discovered that leaving was not an option whencoming through the locked doors.

      The therapy or treatment was basically watching and total control with continuous surveillance, the person was forced to change into often ill-fitting paper scrubs, forced to strip naked in front of strangers then asked the most bizarre violating, humiliating intimate question. Then piss in a cup and evaluate for illegal drugs onboard, and blow into a breath analyzer for alcohol level. 

    I can tell from personal experience that this prisoner watcher guard, corrections officer, medico nurse mentality is difficult to shake off. I needed to find Oplopanax again, so I could say,“ Yes Oplopanax was there just as I'd hoped. She's prickly and thorny and stood there yellow against the cedars green with moss on the northside. Whenever I saw the cedars standing in the water I thought of the blue River. This was autumn Oplopanax and I wasn't sure what she had to say.”  Ihad made promises, vows to watch and understand spring time. I had got to the point where the only confirmation I needed to hear was the plants speaking to me in their own voices, apart from the covid lock down world that had become a world of red dust for me, all of it. Needed to touch base with red oplopanax berries, St John’s wort, high northwest Cascadia peaks with pedicularis, moose tracks and waist high tishwoof Ligusticum. I needed to exit the surveillance state Gog magog up near the 49 north parallel where oplopanax grew and thrived. I needed to take some of that thriving inside and live again.

https://pgmanski.blogspot.com/2017/12/oplopanax-in-gog-magog.html?m=1

             

Cascadia Cedar 

      There is something called herbalism which although attempting to leap the divide, often gets bogged down in the slick soupy snow melt mud of polite logging road respectable conversation. Plants are understood for their drug like compounds. Plants have co-existence with chemical constituents yet they go far beyond that model. Traversing these roads to the plants involves stepping off the logging road of commerce, walking through the mud, the journey towards and with the plants is both the way and the destination. It is more like rambling, walking a short distance then crouching down to see a new old sign, the real work towards approach. 

       While it is probably true, work has been done on the chemical constituents of devil’s club, studies published which corroborate the actual experience with the plant, the plant will remain what it is beyond description. It exists as it’s phenomenological self evident wild self not so much beyond our description, but as it is whether uncovered or not. 
          

Oplopanax berries

       While true Oplopanax horridus has applications which can be medically described, regulates blood sugar, approaches and resolves arthritis pain in the joints, addressing kidney chi issues and flow in the soft tissue, cartilage/sinew, has antimicrobial actions against pathogens on and within the person space, this documented data doesn’t begin to touch the surface of what it does and can do. 

     The history of oplopanax is both topical, on the surface of the skin and taken internal. Numerous studies have indicated the plant as an alterative with regard to blood glucose stabilization, or as its called in the world of red dust, diabetes or metabolic syndrome. It also relates strongly as an aromatic herb, drinking a tea made from the inner bark, you can feel it go to the lungs to aid breathing. You can smell it working in the lungs, I can understand it being used for acute respiratory infections and flu but also for chronic conditions like asthma, it’s that kind of plant. The active aromatic principles of the plant also go into the deep tissues and restore the sinews working on kidney chi for arthritic painful joints, giving relief of pain but not so much as a analgesic, but as a restorative giving increased range of motion and working similar to external arnica oil or tincture. If taken in a huge dose it will be an emetic resembling lobelia and cayenne used in combination, in that the act of purging will some how resolve the condition. In above average use it will work as a laxative loosening the bowels. 

      I first met oplopanax more than 35 years ago while working with Roland Nimmer, a logger and stone mason, while living at the Cora-Y, Wyoming in one of Herman Genetti’s trailers. Roland and I would work, he as a faller, and I limbing with Mormon outfits from Rexbug, Idaho. Doing firewood and logging in the summer and masonary jobs in the winter. 
     

     The best way to initially encounter devil’s club is what Roland Nimmer showed me during down time in a logging operation, back in the day when I was a younger man. We weren’t allowed to fall near the creeks were it grew. We did bath and wash clothes while camped along the creeks. Roland showed me the lateral roots that grew in the thick duff along the creek. The devil’s club creek sides were impenetrable and thick with riparian vegetation. By finding the edge of a patch and pulling away at the duff you could find the bare, barb free, highly aromatic, pale brown creamy white to yellow, springy flexible roots that easily pulled up. Wash the root in the creek, then with a knife scrape down to the white pithy hard center. Put a plug in your mouth and let the horseradishy, hot sweet, slightly acrid, aralia like fruity jaw full do it’s work. I wasn’t aware of alterative, adaptogenic, ginseng-like action in the body while using it. I was in my 20’s and definitely not concerned, aware or interested in arthritic joints, or longetivity, increasing function, and restorative action of plants.  It definitely has a uplifting, energizing touch to it. It puts a youthful spring in the step and gets you into the doing/being mode of getting stuff done. I was doing the same yesterday while gathering arnica so it’s fresh in my mind and instantly brought me back to Roland, the Cora-Y, dark haired women named Eileen and dogs named bear, and those long time gone days and the possibility of possibly performing on stage like that former self for a short time, as in a spell brought on by devils club, smelling, tasting remembering all of that, oplopanax.

      The energetics of the plant are hot, spicy, sweet and warming, distinctly aromatic, it opens the lungs, you can smell it and taste in coughed up mucus, like osha, Ligusticum porteri. It has strong affinity for the airways and lungs, loosening and liquefying secretions. Although not in any way like fresh Monarda pecctinata tea, oregano de sierra, it has the same effect as monarda flower tea in the lungs to open up breathing. It’s easier to take deep breaths. Good fresh Aralia racemosa root mixed with fresh osha has this same quality. As does fresh Angelica arguta root, somehow I would describe it’s respiratory effects as closest to angelica or osha but going deeper into the sinews and soft tissue.

      Yet these respiratory effects often attributed to strongly aromatic herbs like oregano de sierra or poleo, like a vicks vapor rub effect which oplopanax describes, these other herbs tend to not have such a far reaching effect on other body systems.. Oplopanax has affinities to other organ systems which these plants typically do not. 

     So to review Oplopanax can be used as a respiratory expectorant in colds and flu. As a treatment and remedy for arthritic painful inflamed joints, both internally and applied topically as a poultice or plaster. As a remedy for metabolic syndrome, getting blood glucose levels into balance, but also as a way to restore the taste and address sugar addiction and dietary taste and inclination to avoid high risk sugary, high carbohydrate diet. In the short term, regular use will normalize the taste, therefore diet, and therefore initiate short term weight loss. 

     Next, in my research many of the following studies appear to be money big-pharma driven to develop drug medicine but they do in some way support the folk usage. Research has found it has strong antibacterial documented constituents, specifically antimycobacterial properties, with a particular efficacy against bacteria causing leprosy and tuberculosis in humans. Next research has found anti-cancer constituents of breast. lung and colon cancer and research is active in developing compounds in Oplopanax for these purposes. Yet these money driven professional research papers often use in vitro, test tube studies which may or may not have application in human body. They seem to look for isolated components and constituents that may have some application. I don’t have the technology to approach this type of chemical extraction. Looking at a plant like a crude drug doesn’t resonate with me in any way. I think the plant has to stand on its own as a mixed bag whole plant. 

      With highly aromatic volatile plants the plant is best used if possible, as it is in hot water. When I think of the thousand plus years of Aryuveda and TCM in using herbs, the herbs were not immediately embalmed in alcohol. They were pan fried, ala Angelica, dried, but high proof alcohol was not considered or utilized. I tasted some plants I tinctured in alcohol and they as a rule don’t hold up as an equivalent to the fresh plant. Some plant extracts do hold up, and there’s a time and place for everything, but even though sealed they seem to loose potency, of course living in the extreme hot southwest low desert, temperature of storage has a lot to do with this. 
    

Oplopanax in Autumn 

       I feel extremely blessed to have been given another chance by spirit, to make good on my heart. To live on this turtle Island between the Atlantic and Pacific like a person. I want to only watch what is growing and living here. I’m done with watching others for a living. The cost is too damaging. That certain people need watching, I’m sure they do, but someone else will have to do the watching. I was given the chance to experience forgiveness and redemption. I was able to gather up my plant medicines again and bring them with me. Up near the Oplopanax, Doug fir, cedar, Aralia, arnica, St Johns wort, elderberry and Berberis. I learned a lot about people places I'll give thanks to Yaweh, Yahovahe, in Jesus' name, sprinkled by his blood, knowing Jesus is Yehoshua, meaning Yaweh-saves, and He does in his predestined chosen seed covenant, just go deeper continuing with the real work.

and as always...If you're still able to speak openly and a hard enforced dominant culture shun hasn't erased and silenced your voice, please help share these plant teachings freely for our people...

+9

1. T. Calway, G.-J. Du, C.-Z. Wang et al., “Chemical and pharmacological studies of Oplopanax horridus, a North American botanical,” Journal of Natural Medicines, vol. 66, no. 2, pp. 249–256, 2012. View at: Publisher Site | Google Scholar

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4.  C. M. Burton and P. J. Burton, “Recovery of Oplopanax horridus (Sm.) Miq., an important ethnobotanical resource, after clearcut logging in northwestern British Columbia,” Ethnobotany Research and Applications , vol. 14, pp. 001–015, 2015. View at: Publisher Site | Google Scholar

5.  R. G. Large and H. N. Brocklesby, “A hypoglycæmic substance from the roots of the Devil's club (fatsia horrida),” Canadian Medical Association Journal, vol. 39, no. 1, pp. 32–35, 1938. View at: Google Scholar

6.           Nancy J Turner, Traditional Use of Devil’s Club (Oplopanax     

          Horridus; Araliaaceas) by Native Peoples in    

           Western North America: British Columbia 

           Provincial Museum. Journal of EthnoBotany

            2(1): 17-38 May 1982

7

            Daschbach, Alissa B. (Alissa Bronwyn), "All-healing     weapon: the value of Oplopanax horridus root bark in the treatment of type 2 diabetes" (2019). WWU Graduate School Collection. 886.
h ps://cedar.wwu.edu/wwuet/886 

8 Michael Moore, Medicianl Plants of the Pacific West. 

Red Crane Books, Santa Fe, NM 1193

9    Calway, Tyler & Du, Guang-Jian & Wang, Chong-Zhi & Huang, Wei-Hua & Zhao, J. & Li, S.P. & Yuan, Chun-Su. (2011). Chemical and pharmacological studies of Oplopanax horridus, a North American botanical. Journal of natural medicines. 66. 249-56. 10.1007/s11418-011-0602-2.

10      “Panopticism” excerpt from DISCIPLINE AND PUNISH by Michel Fou- cault. English Translation copyright © 1977 by Alan Sheridan (New York: Pantheon). Originally published in French as Surveiller et Punir. Copyright © 1975 by Editions Gallimard. Reprinted by permission of Georges Bor- chardt, Inc. for Editions Gallimard. 

 

11 “Thoughts During the Plague No6- Discipline and Punish” by Alexander Dugin 

HTTPS://WWW.GEOPOLITICA.RU/EN/ARTICLE/THOUGHTS-DURING-PLAGUE-NO-6-DISCIPLINE-AND-PUNISH

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