On my doorstep – and probably yours

At what point did we stop taking notice of the beneficial plants that live around us? At what point did nettles cease to be one of the most nutritious, healing herbs available to us – from seed to root – and instead become merely a pain in the arse; something to hack at with sticks when you were a kid (as Kevin Bridges recalls!).

Dandelions were known as wet-the beds when I was a kid (a pis-en-lit in France incidentally). Woe betide the foolhardy soul who touched one with their bare hands, for they would be slegged (n.b mocked good-naturedly) mercilessly by the other children that they would surely pish the bed that night. It was much, much later in life that I learned about the diuretic and purgative properties of the dandelion.

I doubt that many others learned this lesson though; and that’s exactly the point.

As a society – as a species really – we have fallen out of whack with our vegetable chums. How many people know that both the nettle and the dandelion can be eaten, raw or cooked, let alone that their various preparations can be used as medicine?

I use the example of these two plants because they are so prolific, and because they are recognisable to virtually everyone, but there are so many others. Some won’t be considered quite as irritating, but they may be just as plentiful, if not more so. Off the top of my head, then; a quick list of other beneficial plants that can be found in north Belfast: raspberry, apple, elder, hawthorn, rose, burdock, lavender, sloe, wild garlic, pine, daisy.

I can’t quite remember the point at which I became interested in the consumption and application of plants for nutritional or medicinal purposes. It possibly coincided with my growing disillusionment with the medical establishment, which began with my discovery of the true nature of Big Pharma, and the creeping realisation that not everyone who works in medicine prioritises healing over profit. I found out that many pharmaceutical products are derived from plant-based compounds, and that these compounds are isolated, patented, and mass-produced. And I found out that when you isolate a plant’s active ingredient, you lose the subtle interaction between it and the other inherent compounds, and therefore you change the way the body processes it; often in a way that is counter-productive to human health.

But I am a long way off from being an expert herbalist, and in this blog I aim to document my progression from novice to, well, hopefully to someone who can competently identify beneficial plants everywhere I go, and who can compartmentalise the ones that may be eaten raw from the ones that need to be cooked, and the ones that may only be applied topically. I will explore the many preparations that are possible – from teas and decoctions to salves and poultices – and will document the learnings from the many failures I am likely to have.

Everyone should know the basics – the treatment of minor ailments, for example, in order to avoid the Petri dish purgatory of A&E – and I aim to acquire mine quickly; but I am hungry for knowledge, and open-minded about where all this will lead.

For the purposes of this blog, my brand of herbalism will encompass fruit and possibly, further down the road, mushrooms. Other topics jostling for position in my head include ayurveda, essential oils, paganism, shamanism, and cooking.

And where does this all fit into the life of a middle-aged north Belfast gobshite? And does it all have a place in the lives of other 21st Century human beings, gobshites or not?

Questions questions…

To begin, and as ever, I choose the path of least resistance. No point in a hike up the mountain when one of the most widely-used, most beneficial plants of all can be found right across the road from my front door.

And so, it being early September, first up is the elderberry.