What a day! I know I added a little extra carbon to the atmosphere but the drive was fantastic and the herbs abundant!
The target for today were Hawthorn flowers and leaves and Wild Roses. I was looking for sources that I don't usually harvest from and were only I quiet backroads. Was I disappointed? No way! I discovered 3 new locations, 2 varieties of Hawthorn (I think) and more Wild Roses than I could poke a stick at. I tried but my best stick poking wasn't even remotely up to the task!
Our local Hawthorn is Crataegus monogyna because its fruit has only one seed. Mono = one, gyna= seed. The fruit won't be ready to pick for a couple of months but we're sure of a bumper crop!
There are also a few nice patches of the local Evening Primrose around and the last two pics are of the spectacular Malus trees in the park at Gumeracha in full flower. I think that they're Malus spectabilis but not sure.
Yesterday's harvest washed and drained overnight. Now where am I going to dry all of these? We don’t have a lot of space!
Some of the trees I found were finishing flowering so I grabbed a bit extra from a few trees thst were in full bloom because I may not be able to return to the area again this week. Don't worry though, I left heaps to set fruit and for the critters too.
I'm a bit weird when it comes to harvesting herbal materials. If a plant looks extremely happy or just plain beautiful, I wont harvest it or even photograph it, preferring to keep that specisl memory.. Some of the trees yesterday were just so stunning in full flower that I just sat, breathed and appreciated them but didn't pick from them.
Plants aren't here just for us, even though we eat them and make healing remedies from them. They are complex living beings with all that that entails and should be respected as such. Take a few moments from your harvesting just to appreciate their beauty and the wonderful life that they support. If you're up in the moister, more colonised parts of the hills over the next few days, I thoroughly recommend taking the time to appreciate the beauty that is the Hawthorn tree.
Some of you may have seen that I've been writing a series of posts about herbs and making herbal remedies at home. I want to share what I know of this topic so that, as the world gets crazier, folks will have other avenues of medical care, namely those of themselves and their community. If you look back over this blog, you can see heaps of info on the topic, plus loads and loads of posts on herbs and using Australian bushfoods from a white perspective. If you haven't been around on in the @hivegarden and @naturalmedicine communities for long, you may be interested in looking back. There's w-a-a-a-a-y too much there for me to repost and the Hive system doesn't let you vote on old posts so, if you're happy with what you find, I believe that there is now a tip option...
