Manzanita, Little apples, Arctostaphylos pungens

So here is Arctostaphylos pungens, Pointleaf manzanita, Family Ericaceae, little apples Manzanita. Rich red brown shiny bark, astringent sour leaves. A tree a bush, a friend reminds me of an anonymous spring somewhere in Southern Utah, a seep of water, canyon oaks, coolness and hair like water grabbing the minds eye. 

     Pale pink trumpet delicate flowers that bloom quickly in early spring.

For me always the smell of the manzanita leaves mixed with pinyon pine pitch, juniper and artemisia, sat on a piece of slick rock, wafting up and swirling around into the sky. Reminds me of prayers or intention like Kristina said, or dreams or blessing and protection.

With every dream or intention or prayer there is memories of dreams that were only dreams, no more no less, but dreams only. Smoke that didn't rise, fires that burned out, roofs that fell in leaving only rusted tin and walls.

     Manzanita is like that it's good for those itchy burning down there sorts of things that some unlucky are prone to, even though they wipe the right direction.

Moist warm hairy soft places are sometimes problematic for multiple reasons, manzanita leaf tea can help. 

     Then there's the apples, the little apples that tempted and nourished and guided us back in a dream, those fruits

are there for jam and tea and just to have and hold a tiny apple less than your baby finger nail, ripening in the sun. Nice to know and praise fertility and youth.

     But back to the name and burning dried manzanita leaves mixed with pine pitch and juniper branches. This is the bear. The north circling above, the hunter, Arctostaphylos uva-ursi, the bear that circles upon which all the stars follow like shadows, like dreams, like prayers. Good to see manzanita again and in that pollen of spring a memory of hair sparkling like water

drawing the eye in closer and closer. Manzanita.

by Paul Manski

Plant Medicine Roads

"What we are doing is helping people connect, and unless we connect, then we can't help people connect unless we ourselves connect" - Michael Cottingham

so connect.

if you want connection, connect. Connect with the place. If you want to connect you must connect. If you want to help other people connect you have to connect.

Your connection is important. You can't bring them a connection unless you are connected. so that's really all we're doing is connecting. to do this work of connecting connect with the plants.

Connect with the songs and stories on the plant medicine road that the plants have given us, are giving us and will give us.

Listen as much as you can to the stories. talk plant story where ever you go. everything is a story. everything about the plant is a story. always be listening to hear what the story is. what the connection is, what the connection does. 

     Aho, hello all friends on plant spirit song medicine road. & you are all my friends if you are on this plant medicine Road. that's how the road works, if you're on the road, then we are on the road. that 'we' is the friendship, that we share and will continue to share.

Nourish those relationships on the plant medicine Road. they are precious. They are precious events when you meet a friend. it is just like Pulsatilla

 when you met Pulsatilla  it was a great friend! so if you meet a friend on this medicine road know that it is not an accident!  You two are meant to be together forever on this medicine Road, on this plant medicine spirit Road, whoever you meet on this road becomes part of your family forever.

 thank you for sharing your heart thoughts and feelings, prayers and faith go out to brothers and sisters Zachary, Raychel, Cyndi, Janet, Eva, Greg, Michael, Heather, Doña Melodía, Amelia,  (and anyone i missed.!) i read your words thru several times and i feel blessings flowing from the plants and so thru our teacher Michael, who brought us together & the plant teachers  growing in these medicine gardens who speak to us and show themselves to us.

i thank spirit of earth & sky,  wind and stars, thanking flowing warm waters of Eden. 

we all know plant spirit songs have called us before ever much time, & before this time they spoke to our fathers and mothers and called them, nourished their bodies and sang songs for all to hear. it is now becoming for us about the plants, we are becoming plant/people, plant/persons. this is hard because maybe before we lived for ourselves without plant spirit medicine songs.

many of us lived without a teacher to provide for us the plant stories, to show us the plants in the medicine gardens. we lived in a place but we didn't hear the plant medicine songs of the place. now we flow in this oral tradition with a teacher to show us the place. now old things pass away, things are born and now somethings are dying in us, we are giving birth to ourselves through to the plants. we are all called in some degree to follow  the plant medicine road and walk in balance and beauty where we are traveling sometimes far away to the mountains places were warm waters flow.

      plants have always been calling us singing songs, telling stories, showing us the way on this medicine road. we pass them by on the road. these great plant medicine road friends and teachers, they have been very sad because we haven't touched them. they see us with our cellular telephones and we're always touching our cellular telephone and they're very sad and they say,

"why can't you touch me? what, can't you hold me in your hand like you hold your cellular telephone?  why can't you put me in your mouth?  can't you taste me? why can't you kiss me on the lips? why won't you follow me all the way down to the ground caress my body?"

 we haven't used them.  we seen them by the roadside and wondered what they are?  they always been there for us powerful teachers, friends, family, right there beside us and they been sad because we haven't used their medicine power to uplift this world. 

     plants have always been here with their songs and stories. everything about the deer house that you heard is true and it was always this way but the road to deer  house was somehow closed. we couldn't pass through the mud. the rocks and the rough road blocked us with illusion of disconnect but now the road is open the illusion of disconnect is all about what?

disconnect is about finding ways to separate us from one another and this plant spirit medicine road.   This is our plant spirit song medicine road traveling. after class i was at Deer House talking & hearing plant story, i could see people... this one i know was sad, crying, another felt lost, others happy and filled. this is a hard road, much beauty but hard. don't give up or give in to despair. i know each one of you are finding good plant medicine, use your plant medicines.

Rely on your plant medicines. Trust in your plant medicines. if somethings come up use yerba santa,  

call on la Gobernadora, Lady Pulsatilla, talk to the plants, sob cry to the plants, let them know what you need. 

don't compare don't despair. everything that you need to know the teachers will show you.

the plants will come to you in dreams. singing their stories for you already told, not small stories but long stories that go all the way from the tips of the trees down to the roots. you'll see where the roots are deep in the ground and those roots will become your own. you will stand tall and your standing there as a man as a woman, as the person you need to be. don't be afraid! gather together.

sing the songs and stories that the plant medicine road are giving you. sing them together. be strong in those medicine Plant Road songs. 

this great illusion is strong and calls you back with fear and phony promises. this medicine plant road is calling, you're being pulled both ways, to go back to the worlds of disconnect. disconnect will call you.  listen to the message now, things will start to come up, problems, issues, roadblocks. i promise you will see them. oh shit! what now? what the fuck? that's just how it is. doubts & problems. a roadblock, a tension, a conflict  whether ON the road or in your mind, if it hinders your medicine road journey you can be sure it's something you need to address and act upon.

we now have our plant road medicines that for sure. yet the Illusion of disconnect wants to pull  back, pull us apart and will find ways to sabotage and play with our heads. when Aristolochia came to Julia and Doña Melodía  i realized the plants have their own agenda, i need to respect that.

it was a message to be friendly, work with that friendliness energy,  welcome all these new faces, "she is my friend.", that what the plant said. Porange, Julia, Paloma, D- new people and just not new people but new plant people,

plus i am meeting these people through Michael, thru Eden, through the plants- i have to respect and trust that.

Be strong with your plant medicines and let's help one another- all your words are worth hearing-thank you all and let  plant songs guide.

    thank you, as you all know i started our eden voyage silly, prideful rough, reckless and embarrassing puking in my jeep, especially in front of young Zachary, who reminds me of my son Josh, yet you all allowed me to continue on, & forgave, thank you. I honor and appreciate your forgiveness.

it makes me stronger to know that you could love me in that way in the Goodway in that plant medicine road way that we follow, with sweethearts of-forgiveness, without judgment. you practiced it. your practice is your teaching for that too I am grateful. and I am grateful. i know it could have gone the other ways. laying in the shade underneath my jeep, wandering here and ther i realized i needed to, 'change my ways'

i had and have violated the plant teachers with carelessness, greedy harvesting and disobeying my plant teachers. i still have some hard lessons to learn, i know they'll make me stronger but i don't relish those hard lessons to come.

sometimes the plant teachers punish me mainly by hiding from me. they are my lover and sweethearts so they hide themselves, i say, 'honey can I have a kiss?', 'no not tonight, i have headaches', the front door is locked so i sleep in my truck or in the doghouse. everyone on this plant road is helping me, i accept that, i know that. i bring that in, '"how is she helping me? how is he helping me? what do i need to change to make this work? why can't i see it? what do i have to let go of, change, or nurture to see beauty in this situation? to see goodness? something good happening?'"

my main job is to acknowledge illusion/disconnect mind is in there, fouling things up but so is plant medicine road mind, so i need to get out of the way and allow flow - 

Mrs "N"- said, "Meet people where they are at. Healing doesn't occur in an environment of judgement...healing is not a destination but a journey we are on, i don't practice heroic herbalism, i work on long slow lasting shifts."

 that is not only for guest, it is host. you know we have the guest and we have the host, we have the entertainment and we have the entertainers. we have all the donuts stacked up and we wonder what is the inside of the doughnut? what is the outside of the doughnut? well there is no inside of the doughnut hole. sometimes host sometimes guest, either way if we see something we're not sure if it's inside or outside, and it doesn't matter where does the inside begin? what is the outside begin? If you see it, if you feel it, then it's something that's important to deal with.

see it? Then own it. that is our road, that is the Bioregional medicine road. Our path is on this plant medicine Road. not only other/patients but self.

 i have to allow some space for good things to flow in, i need not only to stop judging others but stop judging myself. illusion of disconnect mind is mainly in the soft ego judgment,

picking and choosing, the good and bad, the right and wrong, the goodway/bad way, so i have to get to a space where there is clarity openness and the blue sky mind. a conscious let go, let it rest, let it be, give it a space to be whatever it needs to be outside of my control...
As Zoe said, "Your confusion is better than my clarity." -

so i actually bring in & invite blue sky mind into the mix. i ask blue sky mind, "show my clouds, please? Let me see clouds and sky." my thoughts, feelings, goals, problems, tape loops- whatever- i see it with background of blue sky,

clouds. i allow/invite ego concern to be clouds moving across blue sky, dramas, big-plans, hopes, fears all get blue sky mind treatment for a while...until all i see is blue sky, 4 directions, beauty, Hózhǫ́ náhásdlį́į́’. then maybe i see hawk and eagle playing on the thermals flying in the blue sky, way up there, then i go back to whatever and know plant beauty way is there for me, Hózhǫ́ náhásdlį́į́’.

     

    

Vinca major, big leaf periwinkle at Deer House

Vinca major, Family: Apocynaceae Dogbane family

periwinkle, bigleaf periwincle.

I was finding this plant growing all along the riparian areas up at Deer House. I had actually been looking for other plants, and was a little bit taken back how this periwinkle had taken over the riparian areas pushing out palleo mint, the St. John's wort, aralia, and lobelia. 

The more I looked into perriwinkle the more I found it a medicinal plant in its own right certainly prolific. Too prolific yes, yet it is here to stay and I guess I better learn how to use it.

    I was really touched by the beautiful purple flowers that were brilliantly set off by the twining trailing shiny green leaves of the periwinkle.

   The leaves, and seeds of the periwinkle contain vincamine, a precursor to the chemical vinpocetine, which is used medicinally to naturally enhance memory in aging minds.1,2

The old English form of the name, as it appears in early Anglo-Saxon Herbals, as well as in Chaucer, was 'Parwynke,' and we also find it called 'Joy of the Ground.' In Macer's Herbal (early sixteenth century) it is described:

'Parwynke is an erbe grene of colour

In Tyme of May he beryth blo flour,

His stalkys ain (are) so feynt and feye

Yet never more growyth he hey (high).'

And we are also told that 'men calle it ye Juy of Grownde.'

The plant is astringent, bitter, detergent, sedative, stomachic and tonic[4, 7, 21, 53, 165, 238]. It contains the alkaloid 'vincamine', which is used by the pharmaceutical industry as a cerebral stimulant and vasodilator[238]. It also contains 'reserpine', which reduces high blood pressure[238]. It is used internally in the treatment of excessive menstruation, abnormal uterine bleeding, vaginal discharge and hardening of the arteries[238]. It should not be given to patients with constipation[238]. It is applied externally to vaginal discharge, nosebleed, sore throat and mouth ulcers[238]. The plants are cut when flowering and dried for later use[238]. The fresh flowers are gently purgative, but lose their effect on drying[4]. A homeopathic remedy is made from the fresh leaves[4]. It is used in the treatment of haemorrhages[4].

Lesser periwinkle (Vinca minor) aerial plant and its synthetic alkaloid vinpocetine have been shown to improve blood flow to the brain. Vinpocetine may be able to enhance cognition in patients with dementia, and enhanced memory and learning in patients with vascular dementia.

"it's a late comer, more recent arrival to america's, but then so am I, yes Vinca major.

Michael Moore

VINCA MAJOR , V. MINOR(Periwinkle)

HERB. Tincture [Fresh Herb 1:2, Dry Herb, 1:5, 50% alcohol] 20-40 drops, to 2X a day.

Kiva Rose a clearheaded New Mexican herbalist writes eloquently about the weeds. In this case a town weed. It's true we can't escape or go back, the box was opened now we deal with it, or escape in fantasy. So using these prolific invasive species that just take over is critical and important as they're here to stay like we are and they're not going to go away. 

• Periwinkle (Vinca major) – The astringent flowers and leaves of vining, groundcover-like Periwinkle are an effective vascular tonic, serving to tighten up the tissue of the vascular system wherever there is laxity. Based on this same systemic tonifying action, I frequently utilize Vinca as a vasoconstrictor for certain kinds of migraines."-Kiva Rose, blogpost Weedwifery -http://bearmedicineherbals.com/aha

 Medicinal Plants by  Charles Kane: "like caffeine though. Winkles vasoconstricting effect on peripheral blood vessels, it can be useful in diminishing the pain and sensitivity of an acute stage migraine headache. Systemically as well the plant lessons passive hemorrhaging. Used to quell bleeding from hemorrhoids,

nosebleeds, and urinary tract injury. Profuse menstruation as well as mid cycle bleeding, also diminishes under perry Winkle use" -Charles Kane

"Venus owns this herb, and saith, That the leaves eaten by man and wife together, cause love between them. The Periwinkle is a great binder, stays bleeding both at mouth and nose, if some of the leaves be chewed. The French used it to stay women's courses. Dioscorides, Galen, and Ægineta, commend it against the lasks and fluxes of the belly to be drank in wine."

Nicholas Culpeper, 1653

. "Vinca minor has a stimulating action on the circulatory system and improves the blood flow through the brain. It is noted to be helpful in the treatment of headaches, dizziness, impaired memory, tinnitus and hearing loss (Bartram, 1998), as well as cerebral arteriosclerosis which can lead to dementia due to insufficient blood flow to the brain (Chevallier, 2001). By increasing the blood flow to the brain, Vinca minor may be beneficial for treating conditions which are caused by poor cerebral perfusion such as vascular dementia. This condition is caused by an obstruction in the circulation to the brain which results in insufficiency of blood to the tissues and the brain cells die (Alzheimer’s Society, 2008). Vinca minor’s beneficial effects may be explained by the action of the constituent vinpocetine (an indole alkaloid), which has been isolated in the plant. Vinpocetine has been shown to enhance oxygen release of haemoglobin and therefore increase the amount available to cells (Tohgi et al, 1990). This action, along with its vasodilating effect is considered to be responsible for its success in the treatment of cerebral hypo perfusion (Tohgi et al, 1990)."- Jennifer Gould

"Lesser periwinkle (Vinca minor) aerial plant and its synthetic alkaloid vinpocetine have been shown to improve blood flow to the brain. Vinpocetine may be able to enhance cognition in patients with dementia, and enhanced memory and learning in patients with vascular dementia." -Jennifer Gould

References/Quotes

[1]F. Chittendon. RHS Dictionary of Plants plus Supplement. 1956

Comprehensive listing of species and how to grow them. Somewhat outdated, it has been replaces in 1992 by a new dictionary (see [200]).

[4]Grieve. A Modern Herbal.

Not so modern (1930's?) but lots of information, mainly temperate plants.

[7]Chiej. R. Encyclopaedia of Medicinal Plants.

[238]Bown. D. Encyclopaedia of Herbs and their Uses.

Macers Herbal 

De Viribus Herbarum

Macer Floridus 1477

Materia Medica, Michael Moore

http://www.swsbm.com/ManualsMM/MatMed5.pdf

Complete Herbal

Nicolas Culpeper 1653

Kiva Rose, blog post "Weed Wifery"

 http://bearmedicineherbals.com/aha

Vincamine article at NIH.gov , , (): The health benefits of vincamine and related compounds, which are sold as drugs in Europe, relate to the treatment of primary degenerative and vascular dementia. As a dietary supplement, vincamine is promoted as a nootropic.,  

HerbalGram . Evidence of Benefits from Herbal Preparations for Improving Cognition and Behavioral and Psychological Symptoms of Dementia in the Elderly , , (04-30-2012): 

“Identifying the benefits of Vinca major (Greater Periwinkle) and Vinca minor (Lesser Periwinkle) in a Modern Herbal Practice. With a historical review of the herbs and analysis of current use by herbal practitioners.”

Scottish School of Herbal Medicine and the University of Wales for the award of BSc(Hon) in Herbal Medicine.

-by Jennifer Gould

http://www.reconnecttoself.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/JenGold-Dissertation-2008.pdfg

Meeting Valeriana arizonica at the Deer House

Valeriana arizonica, Family: Caprifoliaceae, formerly Valerianaceae.

 Arizona valerian or tobacco root.   Valeriana arizonica is a showy plant with basal leaves and clusters of muted but distinctly purplish flower balls. When you look at the showy flower cluster balls closely you'll see, lobes, white stamens (usually 3), anthers extend beyond lobes,  5petals with the anthers extending beyond the lobes. It was found at 6500ft at the upper Deer-house on an upper elevation moist, shady, north facing slope. This is a yin place, female, dark, grounded and nourishing, supportive. 

   

Valeriana arizonica is an indicator species of this place, the Upper Deer House, the north facing slope shade place plant community. It's one of the earliest plants to bloom in the spring at upper deer house, then the basil leaves are some of the last green to be found peeking out of the first snows of the fall. The leaves and roots are what are used and depending on the time of the year it's going to have a little bit different medicine going on. The active ingredients are called valepotriates, research has confirmed that these have a calming effect on agitated people, but are also a stimulant in cases of fatigue. It's a good plant medicine to know and work with. It can help you wind down when your thoughts are going spinning in circles and you're trying to go to sleep and you need to rest. It's been called a nervine and a tranquilizer but it's more than that. Valerian  is a plant person. She is a friend and a kind of lover that opens for us doors and windows into where we need to be.

    It's been used around the world east and west north and south as a friendly nervine, useful both for sleep and rest , also like many plants it goes where it needs to go in terms of the body system. You can look it up and read up on Valerian and find out what people have said about it and they said quite a bit. And it's good to use as John Slattery teaches a 4 directions approach towards herbs utilizing the oral history, the written history, the scientific studies and our own experience with the plant itself in the place where it grows. This is John Slattery's 4 directional approach to herbal medicine

     If you try to put our medicine road plants into a box, the deeper you look you find out your box is getting bigger and including the whole place. Either, you end up with a very big box. Either, your box expands and explodes to include the whole world or else you totally give up your journey of exploration with herbs. That's what happens because the plants are much bigger than any box we can devise with our conscious word based discursive thinking, box building minds. That's what plants do, they open up for us windows and they allow us to grow in the way that our deepest nature wants us to grow. You just hang out with the plants and talk plant story and in that conversation that's where the medicine is. That is the medicine road,  talking plant story with the plant. Just like the plants who are people, we are people and even though we've been domesticated and bred and have all our agonies, glories, sorrows and joys that we drag around with like baggage and balls and chains behind us, still we are self directed and self organizing beings. Everything in the amazing towering sheltering oak is contained in the small acorn. And we are the same. We are no different. Your whole story with all it's amazing twists and turns was contained in that first kiss of lips meeting lips and the warm breath and tangy smell that brought your father and mother together. Your whole journey was that kiss, your whole journey was in that riveting eye first locked eyes. They looked at each other and you were there, in that. You are a self-directed energy moving with its own agenda because it is self-thus. And the days that we walk aboveground the sights  that we see are precious. It's a special time right now and it will not come again just like the plants blooming up at Deer House. They have their roots in the ground and their hair and bodies are in the patchy dappled sun light. When you meet a plant you are forever changed by that meeting. Because the plant is meeting you! You've met the plant and now the plant sees you. The plant feels you and reaches out to you this is what it is, this is what we're doing. You are tasting the plant and the plant is tasting you. Michael Cottingham says that the definition of herbal medicine is change. The herbs change us, they produce change. They bring change.  They facilitate changes. Just like the medicine grounds of Deer House, our bodies are wild, self-directed creatures and they are self-thus, they are self-directed with their own organization based upon their nature. 

    You are learning about the plant leaning down close to it and tasting it. The plant is tasting you. We are eating and being eaten. Nothing is lost and nothing is gained. It is all about being present listening and realizing that we are being heard. We have voices we have mouth's and we have ears. We can speak and we can listen.

     Gary Snyder said, in Practice of the Wild: "Coyote and Ground Squirrel do not break the compact they have with each other that one must play predator and the other play game. In the wild a baby Black-tailed Hare gets maybe one free chance to run across a meadow without looking up. There won't be a second. The sharper the knife, the cleaner the line of the carving. We can ap-preciate the elegance of the forces that shape life and the world, that have shaped every line of our bodies—teeth and nails, nipples and eyebrows."

    Our big heads and conscious mind with all our big ideas have all sorts of ideas and plans to do this, to go here, to become this, yet the plants with the roots going deep into the earth are calling us. They are like girlfriends, sisters , father and cousins that we meet at parties or we meet in our daily life and what we need to is conversation with the plants. We need to talk plant story with the plants, with that north facing cool hillside sometimes covered in snow. Sometimes bursting forth in springtime with balls of purplish flowers. And like all conversations they go back-and-forth, not just one way. If it's one way then it's a monologue.

Conversation is both talking and listening, the only thing we're doing  is talking plant story. We're talking plant story. We are a little bit drunk and tipsy and we're talking about things that we usually don't talk about at work or while we're driving our cars, we are having some fun with the plants it's a special time. Yet we're not alcoholics or drug addicts, but sometimes we party with the plants and talk story. It's just what we do. We're listening to songs. Some of the songs are songs that we've written ourselves. So we play a few chords on our banjo and sing some old songs that we heard from years ago. Sometimes we shake the rattle and listen to the drum beating in the heart of earth mother. Sometimes our songs are drinking songs and sometimes they are serious songs but they're all songs and they're all worth singing. Some of the songs are songs that the plants themselves are singing, and we need to listen to both. We need to sing the songs and we need to listen to the songs. 

    Like all plants they're living beings, they're friends, they're family and they're working on many different levels, and in many different ways in the body, in the emotional heart and the mind.  

Valerian  can also energize and restore when it needs to and when the body needs that sort of energy it will be that sort of energy. i know that in some people it actually has a stimulant effect kind a paradoxical thing and often times you see plants doing this kind of thing, playing around. Valerian and all plants have for that matter, their own agenda outside of our conscious minds with our words and thoughts and plans,  it's leading us where we need to go and it's that confidence that we need to bring forward with the plants,  with our plant medicines to go to that place where we need to be. Plant medicines take their own way through our body and they'll do one thing in one person and something else in another based on the person's energetics, connstitution, and needs at any particular time. As soon as you know one plant and think you have it figured out it is something else. It will show you it has another place that it will take. Another journey and another destination. This is bioreregional herbal medicine because we're not dealing with chemicals were not dealing with drugs, we're dealing with the spirit of a place and a way to take that spirit of the place into our bodies.

     

References:

Conversations:

 talking plant story

John Slattery 

Tucson, AZ

Michael Cottingham 

Silver City, New Mexico

Practice of the Wild: Essays by Gary Snyder

North Point Press 1990

http://terebess.hu/zen/mesterek/The-Practice-of-the-Wild-by-Gary-Snyder.pdf

Medicinal Plants of the Mountain West

by Michael Moore

Museum of Mexico Press 2003

The Plant Healers Path

by Jesse Wolf Hardin with Kiva Rose

Plant Healer Press 2012

www.PlantHealerMagazine.com