Fire Cider

       #FireCider is an excellent way to get the community based free herbalism thing going. Keeping it simple with food/slash/medicine plants people are familiar. You can later add more controversial less understood plants after people get ok with it. Preaching to the choir is cool yet it's important to help mitigate suffering by using things people can relate. Then later go further. I go heavy on the onions, garlic, horseradish, ginger less so on cayenne. The whole meyers lemons add a different kind of tartness and the rind a bitter element. The honey here is more aesthetic, taste rather than a medicinal amount. 

Fire cider recipe:

equal parts: fresh chopped: 1)garlic 2)horseradish root

3)onion 4)hot peppers 5)ginger 6)meyer lemons place in 1/2 gallon jar cover w apple cider vinegar, let sit for 14 days, drain, add 4oz honey, take 1oz every morning during winter. Keeping it simple here, herbs can help people along on their road. Fire cider is accessible, familiar and by going soft on the pepper you'll find you can gift it and people are open to using it.

     You can add elderberry, rose hips, turmeric astragulus. This is a simple community based recipe. #FireCider is an example of an acetum, oxymel an excellent way to keep herbs for winter use. The heavy alcohol thing can be a turn off, especially with kids and families. Begin to use experiment, play around with vinegar honey with herbs at this time. As an example rather than an elderberry tincture, make a cooked syrup or use vinegar acetum to get the herbal stuff, the herbal constituents into people's bodies. No matter how fine or excellent an herbal remedy is, it's totally useless if people don't take it. Some people go too heavy on the cayenne, making fire cider too hot. The main thing is to get the food/slash/plant herbal medicines into bodies. Garlic onions have good properties, healing therapeutic properties. Ginger horseradish, are warming herbs, work together to help cough, loosen bronchial secretions, all important for damp cold stuck conditions. 

     In a vitalist approach, the without is within and the within is without, meaning that the winter itself, the winter that is happening outside, rain and snow, a cold damp condition, is not a pathological condition, just a condition, a season. Moving towards descriptive, what is, rather than prescriptive, what should be. Winter is cold, it's just what it is. The body at certain times gets cold and damp, stuck in a cold damp condition. I tend to be going into a place where i don't want to use terms like antiviral, antibiotic, anti-anything. Describe and note conditions, presentations, symptoms, what is actually happening rather than a medical diagnosis.  Fire cider is a small miracle because it works, it's simple, familiar and available, people are willing to use it and once you strain it out you still can use everything remaining in the jar as a food condiment, add a little redmonds utah red salt and you have excellent tasty seasoning to add to soups, salad, omelettes. Food, life, herbs, community.

      I am Using equal parts by chopped cut up volume, eyeballing it. Roughly a glass Pyrex 8oz measuring cup rounded full of each. Since this may go to a general public without a lot of experience with herbs, I go with a medium hot jalapeño rather than cayenne powder or something like a habernero. I go heavy on garlic, onions, horseradish, ginger, not so much peppers. The honey amount 4oz added to the strained liquid result of a 64oz jar is less than say a Rosemary Gladstar recipe. While having about the same ratio horseradish ginger onion, a lot more garlic, more jalapeño compared to Rosemary G. 

     I kind of view it as a prophylactic, within that continuum of food plant  to medicine plant, closer to food plant, like an introduction to herbs although potent in its own right. 

      If some was coming down with a low grade fever, achy, no obvious chest involvement or overt congestion, dry unproductive cough in our current situation:i would probably go with a Sambucus dried leaf tincture, lobelia tincture or acetum, ginger/tumeric tincture tea, Elderberry flower tincture or tea, Red root tincture, Ligusticum Angelica combo tincture, Yerba mansa or elephant tree tincture, an Asteracea ally like echinacea, rudbeckia or balsam root, with Skullcap, Pedicularis,  Anemone, or a strong Prunus bark not for cough but  to encourage sleep rest, and  fairly large amounts of those herbs, and since that's a lot of herbs, back off on the fire cider to avoid stomach upset. That's off the top of my head. 

Ktishwoof Notes

Tkishwoof Lesson: (Transcribed lecture notes) biospirit covenant teachings on the endless medicine road

Ktishwoof 

     Tkishwoof, a biospiritual approach. So these next nights we have the waxing gibbous moon in sidereal Capricorn, perfect for what we're doing here. Good to see everyone, let's talk about this amazing biospiritual plant Ktishwoof. A lot of you know it from other areas, we'll be sitting with this plant, passing out some root and tincture and we'll comes back and you can teach me. Because the plants through Yaweh, Yeshua our Messiah, got that Holy Ghost wind blowing, you are the teachers. I don't know anything about anything, you do you with these plants. 'Gather together with those gathering', that's what's going on. So we'll sit, you will teach me with the plant teachings, then come back and i will try to confuse you a bit. Let's pray first, because that's the most important thing, to ask Father Yaweh to give us Holy Ghost wind through our biospiritual bodies, so we can do no harm in a good way and relieve some of this suffering that's going on, that's been throwed on us these days...

.....Ktishwoof ... family Apiaceae or carrot, parsley, carrot family, as a plant is circumpolar eurasia. As said before to those called out by a stone of stumbling, 1 Peter 2:9 "But ye are a chosen (predestined) generation (kin- genos - offspring), a royal priesthood, an holy nation (ethnos- ethnicity), a peculiar (purchased possessions) people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light"....here we are on this dripped down plant, upon the well known flood ice sheets  deposited on high peak mountains. Mainly in western rocky mountains both main and residual spurs from arizona northward to British Columbia, similar asia. These plants were one species that typified in place. 

    Wherever found it was used described similar by people with no apparent contact. Whenever a plant is used the same way by various people separated lost tribes, then such a plant becomes noticed remembered. That memory is archetypal and emerges spontaneous. So the knowledge comes out all at once effortless. 

Angelica, Valeriana sitchensis, kishwoof 

     As such we know it, teach it, in our lessons and teaching to nourish biospirit, as a ingrained biospiritual. It has come up recently with the launching of these new call them what you will. These new grouped organized biospirit attacks, as it did in 1918 during the first part of the biospiritual attack strategy in their war of our erasure of Europe, as we teach it. America had a debate, probably the last debate, whether to enter as combatant into the erasure of europe which it did to hasten its own chastisement, which continues unabated. What is understood taught as the 30 years war 1914-1945 of prolonged erasure. These plants come up and will do so again due to its ingrained nature. Like elderberry leaf did recently made known. 

     Ingrained meaning mixed in with our sinews, thoughts and bones, in our teaching biospirit. As these launched grouped organized biospirit attacks escalate and proliferate our established remnant teachings are mobilized to do no harm, walk in balance using the teaching point, gather with the gathers in refuge arcs for what's come coming. 

     Ktiswoof, is biting sharp, highly aromatic, burnt caramel, Angelica like but more sharp, sweet but not sweet. Tkishwoof is definitely warm. Dry. It works on lung, upper burner, spleen marrow. It will cause you to sweat. It will release the outside. It pushes wind and cold forward to the surface were it can be processed. It will quicken, speed up the lungs so that the moist stuck mucus unravels and will feed a cold further. So it will get rid of the green crud, cough it up. It will move the blood stuck in the stomach lower burner, so that blood can cook the lungs. Often times back ache will flare at first onset, with cold pain deep blood pain in the bones. Tkishwoof will move that stuck blood and dilute it, diversify the stangnant blood. 

     In this teaching whatever is happening outside is happening inside. A lot of it is shits and giggles, face reflected in two mirrors. You couldn't see it outside there unless it already penetrated the veil. So lifting the veil, you accept it, believe and do as it's taught. So don't be alarmed remedies are there. They would like to see faithless generation, can you see it? So we keep faith one hundred percent. This is our, your faith to keep with Ktishwoof. 

ktishwoof roots

      So it will spur the blood, activate blood to move rather than sit and sulk. Move the Holy Ghost wind throughout the body and alleviate pain. There is no shortage of pain. Pain and disease is everywhere outside, we don't pretend it's here or not here. 

       This Ktishwoof herb has the purpose of resolving stuck, addressing stuck liver. When the liver gets stuck there's pain and  and blood stuck leads to chest pain. At this point you get deathly sick eating a peanut butter sandwich. You're afraid of your shadow. So we have a marching army of hypochondriacs, wearing masks, apologizing to who knows who, fear suckers. When the heart gets stuck, this heart vessel tightens you'll get chest pain with exertion, angina, infectious asthma. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. Well you can't think either. So you get a thousand people who can't breathe. They decide to burn your city down. It's all bravo sierra. 

    So for this chest pain and hypochondriac syndrome caused by jerky unpredictable blood circulation that is resulted from a slow clogged liver and Holy Ghost stagnation, we would combine with liver-soothing berberis, bitter gentian, toadflax, red root, wild cherry bark and with Ktishwoof stuck-removing herbs. You know wild cherry bark is extremely liver restorative. 

Wild cherry bark

      

      Many people get headaches, a lot of people are headaches. People underestimate contagion. If everyone has headaches then there's a contagious element to headache. If everyone has asthma then keep six feet away, no 600, 6000 feet away because we don't want to be part of your asthma plandemic. Ktishwoof ascends moves up, look over there that's the north. Up there is polaris the North Star, and tkishwoof moves up that way. It's warming and spreads out. So it will reach the eyes and head, straight up out of your head, towards the north star turning. It can relieve that headache pain. So Ktishwoof is important for treating headache. You can burn and breathe the smoke, for infectious asthma headaches. Sometimes just breathing it will do the trick. Just like that, boom. We went through how to make it tincture, wine, vinegar water, smoke it. Smoking it for headache works fastest. If you got a headache better find Tkishwoof. 

      Because it unstucks blocked stuck it can open move a cramped menses. Women don't want to get clogged, stuck blood down there. You need some movement, some action, some fire. That cold stagnant blood energy is the quickest way they'll work to eliminate the vital connection between men and women.

Tkishwoof seed planting

      I always remember Nevy Jenson from Grey mountain, he couldn't even come through the door because it faced north.

Nevy Jenson with his Jeesh, 1917-1998 code talker, blessingway singer

 So he had to come through the back door on the southside with his Jeesh for blessingway. There's that story where the men and women decided they hated each other. The men went to one side of the river and the women went to other side. They didn't want each other, they said they could do without each other. They said, whack off we don't care. Well we all know how that went. (laughter) They got into all kinds of weird and guess what? They gave birth to monsters. So they're giving birth to monster stuckness, big cramps. So woman use tkishwoof to unloose that stuck uterine blood. Especially after birth to get lochia moving, to get that out. Tkishwoof will help a mother's milk feed her babies biospirit, to make that little baby feisty in a good way. Baby will smell that tkishwoof and latch right on, latch on hard. Especially a winter baby, Ktishwoof will move that babies blood in all the right areas, so baby won't get colic and turn into a leftist, antifa, democratic and burn down the library and supermarket. A lot of illness in a woman can be prevented by not holding onto the blood, let it flow.

ktishwoof leaf

      Lastly with Ktishwoof we have the deep cold bone stuck sickness. Sore throat, gas, slowed digestion, empacho-ed food. Which can be a dry cough that is cold damp then it lodges and the body will try to burn the dap with a fever. So you get mucus and phlegm, green crud. At this point and way before tiswoof is used. With the dry cough biospiritual attack stuff you have the list of plants to use. Let's take a break and we will head out. 

tishwoof waxing gibbous moon sidereal Capricorn 

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.”
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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.”

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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
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 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.”
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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.).”
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 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.

Toadflax, Linaria dalmatica

Linaria dalmatica, Dalmatian toadflax, Family: placed currently by botanists for their botanist reasoning in Plantaginaceae, or plantain family which it doesn't seem to resemble, formerly in Scrophulariaceae, or figwort family.

Toadflax Linaria dalmatica 

For herbalists it's understood as a figwort. This is a non-native perennial plant naturalized now in many areas. It is native to the mediterranean, Yugoslavia, Dalmatian Coast of the Adriatic Sea. It is considered to be an invasive weed and in many areas, the regimes in power release various beetles and insects and spray poisonous chemicals to eradicate it, and they make studies on which herbicide works best in killing toadflax, usually unsuccessfully. There are narrow leafed and broad leaf varieties, this is the broad leaf variety.

Clasping alternate  leaves

     Linaria dalmatica is a tall plant, up to 4 feet tall, with alternate heart shaped to oblong clasping leaves, with a pointed tip that circle the stem. It has showy yellow distinctive flowers, in a spike raceme. Individual flowers resemble snapdragons with a long spur at the base, that delicately curves. The flowers are unique, bright yellow, asymmetrical with two lips the upper with two lobes, and the lower with three lobes, and an orange throat.
     It was brought by colonial Quakers to Pennsylvania and Delaware as a yellow dye and medicinal plant.
    John Gerard (1545-1612)the English herbalist who wrote a classic text of herbalism, Herball, published in 1597. His book was 1500 pages and is the first of its kind in English with extensive block plant drawings.

Herball John Gerard 1597

The early Quaker's as well as all English speakers were acquainted with it. He writes of Toadflax:  "A. The decoction of Toad-Flax taketh away the yellowness and deformity of the skin, beeng washed and bathed therewith.

            B. The same drunken, openeth the stoppings of the liver and spleen, and is singular good against the jaundice which is of long continuance.

            C. The same decoction doth also provoke urine, in those that piss drop after drop, unstoppeth the kidneys and bladder."

     Which is how we understand the plant, as a liver tonic and stimulant."
     Nicolas Culpeper writing at roughly the same time as Gerard in 1652, wrote of Toadflax: "Government and virtues. Mars owns the herb. In Sussex we call it Gallwort, and lay it in our chicken's water to cure them of the gall; it relieves them when they are drooping. This is frequently used to spend the abundance of those watery humours by urine which cause the dropsy. The decoction of the herb, both leaves and flowers, in wine, taken and drank, doth somewhat move the belly downwards, opens obstructions of the liver, and helps the yellow jaundice; expels poison, provokes women's courses, drives forth the dead child, and after-birth. The distilled water of the herb and flowers is effectual for all the same purposes; being drank with a dram of the powder of the seeds of bark or the roots of Wall-wort, and a little Cinnamon, for certain days together, it is held a singular remedy for the dropsy. The juice of the herb, or the distilled water, dropped into the eyes, is a certain remedy for all heat, inflammation, and redness in them. The juice or water put into foul ulcers, whether they be cancerous or fistulous, with tents rolled therein, or parts washed and injected therewith, cleanses them thoroughly from the bottom, and heals them up safely. The same juice or water also cleanses the skin wonderfully of all sorts of deformity, as leprosy, morphew, scurf, wheals, pimples, or spots, applied of itself, or used with some powder of Lupines."

Toadflax flowers long spur

     Toadflax is a useful liver stimulant and the protocol is dry the plant first before use. Use a teaspoon of the dry herb to make a tea. Use it for a liver flush or liver inflammation flare ups, best combined with Mahonia, dock, dandelion root, and or red root. You can also use toadflax as a bitter digestive tonic for chronic indigestion and add a warming aromatic herb such as poleo, angelica, fennel catnip. One of the side effects of chemotherapy, radiation treatments and even some recent biospiritual viral attacks is an inability to taste, a deficit of salivary saliva- it would be useful if someone is in this condition to try a formula of toadflax. In severe cases swishing the mouth before meals can encourage saliva and digestive juices. Oftentimes with liver issues there are skin issues such as allergic dermatitis, excema, psoriasis which are related to liver, formulas listed previously could be explored. Toadflax is an herb with a profound history in our biospirit. A useful addition to your materia medica, widely available, and easily found. Make sure when gathering toadflax, you gather in areas the self appointed regime has not sprayed with herbicides. A tincture of dried toadflax, DPT 1:5 may also be useful to some

Wormwood

Wormwood

Wormwood 

Artemisia absinthium, wormwort,

 wormwood, wormwood comes from the German wermet, meaning to maintain the mind  thought to aid in clearing mental fog, strengthen clarity.

Wormwood flowers

A acetum was given to Yeshua the Messiah. "the soldiers also mocked him, coming to him, and offering him vinegar" Luke 23:36. When the serpent slithered away from Eve in the garden, in its serpent endless medicine road path grew up wormwood. For that reason marriageable maidens and those who seek them out are fond of it. Angelica root and seeds of the herb of the archangel is added to it for stomach bitters. If there is weakness in the stomach burner and nourishing food swallowed becomes hard lumps, like an extra lower rib and arching the solar plexus you can use this one. Take the flowers and mix with a white wine, or vinegar add Angelica root or seed you have gathered, with a bit of sweet root, you can also make a tincture.
Biospiritherbalists are glad to provide this to increase well being.

Agastache

Agastache urticifolia

Agastache

Agastache urticifolia, horse mint, giant hyssop mint,  Lamiaceae family. Greek Agastache: again-much, Stacey's-ear of grain referring to the flower and seeds. Urticifolia meaning nettle-like.  An erect perennial mint. Strongly squarestemmed in cross section at woody base. Flowers are dense spike like terminal inflorescence clusters. Calyx is tinged lavender, corolla petals irregular bent arched sloping tubular, upper lip is notched. Leaves are arrow shaped, alternate, toothed and creased upwards, larger towards base with a longer petiole. The leaves and flowers are skunky scented mint aromatic fragrant. 

Agastache

     Agastache is a biospirit interface plant used by biospirit folk to increase wellbeing.  The taste is hot, spicy, sweet and warming. Not as fiery, peppery hot as more southern agastache . It grows in transition open meadows in full sun with ninebark, Rosa, Oregon grape. It's circumpolar Eurasia with a wide range from arizona mountains north to British Columbia.

       Agastache is useful in bioreregional biospirit materia medica. Like other mints it is diaphoretic and will encourage sweating, urination, movement in a initial stuck fever. As such it mixes with blue vervain tea at the first sign of a cold due to the polysaccharide water based immunostimulant qualities, and like blue vervain it has a mildly relaxing sedative sleepy quality. You can add drops of tincture to blue vervain tea. It will function as a biospirit servant herb to circulate vervain through the tissue and increase movement of blocked conditions during restful sleep. 

     It can be used with women to promote movement in stuck crampy periods and has usefulness in a formula for cramping and pain with silk tassels, viburnum and red bane berry as a formula. It has mild antispasmodic quality. 

     Due to it's relaxant nerve tonifying quality it can be combined in formula for loose anxiety and agitation and unsettledness with episodes and outbursts with no specific cause. It combines well individually with St. John's wort, bugle weed, skullcap, and Pedicularis. Combine agastache with any of the above herbs in a ratio of 4:1, 75% base to 25% agastache. To these above 4:1 formulas 10-15 % anemone pulsatilla can be added to any of the above for sudden oncoming worry and episodic fretting. 

Agastache

Poleo mint, Mentha canadensis

Northern Poleo mint Mentha Canadensis, corn field horse mint, is a riparian wet boggy marsh native mint, with our biospirit covenant teacher poleo...

 

Northern Poleo, Mentha Canadensis 

Northern Poleo is a Lamiaceae (Mint family), i prefer the botanical name M. canadensis vs Mentha arvensis from an herbal rather than a botanical distinction because as one on a continuous endless medicine road at a certain point in a 1700 mile journey it has diverged from southern varieties in its presentation and herbal energetics. Different botanists will list Mentha candensis as a different species, a sub species or just one species Mentha arvensis from Canada to Mexico. Regardless of botanical name, you'll find subtle but obvious differences. 

https://youtu.be/uEMI1dALX2Q

     While like southern Poleo Mentha arvensis it has the flowers white to white pink purple inflorescence of many-flowered, separated, axillary clusters growing up the stem, 4 lobed, and sharp-toothed leaves tips pointed. It's growth is much more vertical without the bushy sprawling growth seen in southern Poleo. I have found big bushy sprawling soft leafed southern poleo where one small bunch of plants would take up a big botanical space, bags and bags. Northern Poleo is more strictly up and down with little branching off the stem. In addition while the stems of southern Poleo are bushy, softer sprawling and have strong aromatic scent glands present, Northern Poleo canadensis stems are thicker and lack strong scent. The actual scent of Northern Poleo canadensis is a little more reminiscent of a hedioma or mock pennyroyal than southern Poleo. Northern Poleo energetics are sweet, spicy hot, both warming and cooling. 

     

     It does work well as a carminative upper GI remedio, for indigestion dispelling gas and abdominal discomfort with cooling soothing effects while at the same time having warming spicy sweet taste. As a strong tea or use of gathered tincture will promote sweating and while diaphoretic has both cooling and warming qualities both from evaporations of sweat and the menthol cooling sensation. It women it can help stimulate delayed menses period. It has been used in folk remedio formulas and has a stimulating effect on a woman's cycle and can be added and used for premenstrual cramping formulas at the preperiod bloating stage. Topically it can be added to liniments and rub formulas due to some pain relieving qualities. Used topically it works better than southern Poleo in biting bug and tick formulas, similar to hedioma or mock pennyroyal. Poleo does well FPT 1:2, as a spirit de poleo, alone and in our biospirit formulas to nourish northern biospirit. 

     Different stages in Northern Poleo growth will see big changes in the aromatics, like most aromatic plants gather in late flowering stage and you'll notice on an endless medicine road as we are all on differences in aromatics in different plant stands. Since you'll be seeing scullcaps, bugle weeds, poleos together you'll want to taste them, bugle and skullcap for bitterness and Poleo stands for strong aromatics as indicating strong medicine. Gather in full flower above ground portions, you will need to separate lower thick stems vs upper leaves, flowers and tender flexible thin stems. Up to a certain point of course,  dried or tinctured Poleos will improve with age. 

     Along the lines of a lower GI stomachic, the intriguing energetics of northern Poleo as a warming carminative mixes well with many bitter formulas especially a straight bitter like a gentian. You'll need to play around with these formulas but adding seeds of sweet root, Angelica, oshà Tishwoof, northern poleo tincture, can make a more effective unique bioregional signatures bitter. 

    

     Poleo as a Biospirit Bridge herb. Poleo due to its strong aromatics and deepening of the heart, mind biospirit is an herb we use to bridge a space, transition from one space to another. If you don't have poleo, yarrow flowers will work as well. Often times we bring unneeded stuff from space to space. This baggage carried from space to space can interfere with the work we need to do in that space. You don't need to carry anxiety into a test environment. You have studied and adequately prepared so now it's about doing. Whether making love at the full moon, breast feeding, studying for a difficult exam, giving a public talk, poleo is a valuable herb for biospirit bridge. When you're breast feeding you and baby need to be breast feeding. Poleo helps the milk drop down. When you are taking your final exams you don't need to be cooking dinner. When you and your partner are together making love there is no need to bring finances or past lovers into a cool meadow with the sounds of flowing water. In each activity you need to be in that activity completely. 

     One common use of northern Poleo i found useful effective while gathering and exploring southernly poleo along the virgin river, arizona strip, fishlake and tributaries in the 1980's for students of endless road biospirit is to use poleo as a set apart study aid. Use Poleo or yarrow to transition from one formal space to another. You can use poleo tincture to increase learning retention, recall, facilitate approach to a next space effortlessly with minimum baggage dragged between space. Poleo and yarrow are both strong biospirit bridge herb, a traveling walking herb. 

      

Northern Poleo with bugle weed friend

     Use it in this way: before studying, making love, learning a new language, take a few drops of poleo. Smell and taste the Poleo. Have dried leaves nearby, or a rolled smudge stick. You can rub Poleo or yarrow all over your body, under your arm pits, in private areas, on your hair and chest. This will set up the study session. This will develop recall of new material. Frequently during the study session smell and taste Poleo. It doesn't matter the subject. It could be learning a musical instrument, learning a solo, breastfeeding, preparing for a speech, presentation or talk, studying a text, preparation for erotic biospirit work with a loving committed partner, preparing for an exam. Partners can also use Poleo in the same way for intimacy, bridging a space. Then when taking the exam, take the poleo tincture immediately before the exam, rub Poleo or yarrow in your arm pits and private areas, musical performance, breast feeding session, romantic intimacy or whatever you've studied. The poleo will allow whatever you've diligently studied to come to mind on your exam. If you are with a biospirit endless medicine road partner the poleo or yarrow for both of you will allow you both to settle into the space. Recall information and get 100% into the space you need to be nourish biospirit and carry it forward.

     In the support and grateful service of biospirit by His love and grace, sincerely biospirit covenant teacher Paul Manski, Wildherbways.