Tag: clinicalherbalist

clinicalherbalist:

I wanted to post some more about kingnut, since it was unfamiliar to a lot of people. These three nuts—a regular hickory nut, a pecan, and a kingnut— are all hickory nuts of different types. As you can see in the second picture, the pecan and kingnut are shaped along similar lines, but the pecan is skinnier.
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#wildfood #ediblewildplants #wildedible #foraging #gathering #nut
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clinicalherbalist:

Persimmons are starting to get ripe. They aren’t really properly ripe yet, but if it frosts they will ripen quickly. These are another one of my favourite wild foods, and i eat dried persimmon all year long.
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#persimmon #fallenfruit #wildfood #foraging #gathering #plantbased #fruit #wild #sharethelex #lexingtonky
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clinicalherbalist:

Sessile trillium (Trillium sessile). My favourite name for this plant is “toadshade trillium”. The idea is that toads hang out in the shade underneath it, like a parasol or a beach umbrella. And the trillium releases substances that attract flies (its pollinators), and when the flies come the toad eats them. Later on as the fruits begin to ripen, ants come and gather the seeds, which feature a little piece of sweet material that the ants like. So they take it underground for a snack for later, planting the trillium seed (which may, many ant-generations later, grow to produce more of the food they like). And the toad eats some of the ants too.
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Trillium (this species or otherwise) can be locally abundant, but is a long-lived plant with a somewhat specific habitat and a fairly long time between being a seed and a mature plant. So it’s quite vulnerable to overharvesting, even though you might see a hillside robed in thousands of them. Harvesting trillium is like rebuilding the transmission on your car— not a good project for beginners, not a safe thing to do unless you really know how.
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Medicinally, trillium contains some powerful antiinflammatory steroids and steroid precursors; it has also been used for endocrine supporting functions, though for these it is similar to wild yam, which is more common, so usually i try that first.
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#trillium #toadshade #symbiosis #diosgenin #herbalmedicine #herbal #herbalism #nature #wildflowers

clinicalherbalist:

Prickly pear cactus (Opuntia humifisa, or Opuntia compressa var. humifusa, occasionally Opuntia rafinesquii), at the end of winter. It’s the only cactus that grows around here of its own accord, and is pretty common in dry pastures, rocky karsts and cliffs, along railroads, and in those areas under power lines where they come through and cut down the trees periodically. It blooms in late spring, each flower lasting a single day, and the fruits ripen in summer and then just lay there forever if they don’t get eaten. There are two (oblongish brownish purple things) in the middle of this picture. I ate one of them. Still perfectly edible and sweet.
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Both the fruit and the flat green pad are edible, and the pad is used medicinally to help blood sugar to be stable and not rise sharply after meals. It’s used raw as medicine but usually cooked or pickled for food.
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When harvesting and processing, it’s important to note that this plant has two different prickly bits. There are the long white spines, whose main purpose is to stick in the skin of, and anchor the pad to , a passing creature— it will break off and get taken somewhere else, and when it lands on the ground it can grown roots and become a clone of the original plant. Then there are clumps of tiny hair like prickles in each of the brown dots on the pad. These ones (glochids, they’re called) will embed themselves in the skin, tongue, wherever they get a chance to, at the slightest touch, and they can be hard to remove. So they have to be removed before eating and avoided while touching the pads.
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#herbalist #herbalmedicine #herbal #wildedibles #wildfood #wildfoodlove #cactus #succulent #glochids #opuntia

clinicalherbalist:

Chickweed (Stellaria) and deadnettle (Lamium). All winter long in Ky.
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If you’re out in these woods in the winter and trying to forage for food, follow the deer. Their hoofprints will lead you to many good stands of edible plants. And after a week or two you’ll develop the feel for finding them on your own.
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#wildedibles #survival #edibleplants #medicinalplants #herbalmedicine

clinicalherbalist:

Sorghum! (Sorghum bicolor!) It’s a plant a lot like corn, but grown for its juicy stem (the seeds are a grain called milo, but that is another story). You strip off the leaves, feed the stems into a mill (when i was a kid it was a mule-driven mill, but today it was powered by a motor), and put the green sticky juice into a big metal container over a fire.
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As you heat it, three things happen: 1- water evaporates, making it thicker. 2- the sugars carmelize, making it turn a light brown colour, and 3- the chlorophyl-containing bits (chloroblasts) form a scum on the top. You skim this green stuff off, as Yani is doing in picture 3.
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Once it’s cooked down a good bit (maybe 9/10 of the volume gone) and it has gotten syrup-like, you take it off the fire and put it in jars.
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Then you can use it for baking, or to dip biscuits or corn pone in, or you can save it til winter, cook it a little more, and drizzle it into a pan of freshly fallen snow, where it will harden into candy.
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#sorghum #molasses #syrup #farmtotable