Notes from a Walk

Mapping home through the flavors of wild plants

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I love taking walks in this part of the world, on our tree-lined paths or in the more remote and wild places in the mountains. I wrote this essay while on a recent walk near my house, over the course of about a mile. I hope you enjoy it, and maybe are inspired to meet some local plant friends near you, too.

In the past I’ve takes about the flavors we coax out when we ferment our food, or season it, to desired effect. Last month, I often frame this in terms of building a connection to place: using the wild microbes around us and the plants grown locally (cultivated or wild) that can really help us dive into the flavor of a place.  

But tasting the earth, and cultivating sense of place, means tasting these flavors as they already exist for us: Meeting and trying these plants as they are, and learning a bit about them, helps deepen our appreciation of them in nature and on our plates (or in our medicines).  

If you haven’t met them already, I’d like to introduce you to some of the plants I encountered on my one mile walk, this one taking place in a small section of the as-of-yet-unpaved part of the Atlanta beltline. 

How do these plants taste? What do we learn about them when we slow down and explore flavor for what it is? And what lessons can we learn from them when we stop to listen?

To help us learn, I've pulled medicinal descriptions from historic herbal texts like Culpeper*, as well as tasting notes from historic and modern sources. And, since these plants themselves are our teachers, my notes on lessons gleaned from my own seasons of watching and learning from them.

It’s so hot that the air seems to sparkle. Around me radiates the smell of lush green of the trees and underbrush, and the baking warmth of the red clay soil.

It’s so hot I can even detect a whiff of the tar on these now long-decommissioned train tracks. The heat swirls about me, coming in waves between breezes only slightly cooler than the roasting, ambient air.

The walk embodies every element of the Earth; though some of them remain unseen. The heat of the air makes it move like water: Rippling waves through the thicket of Queen Anne’s lace. Swirling eddies of wind to accompany straight line breezes that pop up out of nowhere and dissipate just as quickly. 

The earth seems alight in flame, the product of coreopsis and pineapple weed springing forth in massive clumps near my feet. 

To walk along this old train track is to walk in magic, to see the abundance the earth so eagerly wishes to share with us if we will only stop, and listen, and let her. I've ’ve found my greatest progress to take place not in seeking more but in slowing down. 

Eventually, the powers that be will choose to push this magic aside, to raze it in the name of progress towards an end goal they’re unable to define. And while I hope in my heart that we'll get to a place of collective understanding that we can create new things to support our lives and livelihoods, while also supporting our planet, it may not happen in time to stop the destruction of the plants near my home.

For now, though, the plants thrive, and in their honor I've written about what I've learned from each one. This essay, then, is a love letter of sorts, to the city in the forest and to the everyday magic that is often hiding in plain sight when we allow ourselves to live alongside nature and to enjoy the abundance all around us.

The plants

Curly dock (rumex crispus)

medicinal properties: Culpeper does not distinguish between the many different species of docks, save for burdock, and medicinally many of them have similar uses. In this newsletter issue's recipe, I use them interchangeably, choosing rumex crispus as an abundant source of food and medicine rather than the European dooryard dock, which is harder to find here.
Culpeper notes that seeds and roots are most often used in medicine, and all are cooling and drying meant to stop fluxes, with certain species being better for cleansing the blood, and others being better for cleansing the liver.

flavor: Dock roots have an earthy taste, and are also bitter (like its cousin burdock). The leaves contain oxalic acid, which gives a lemony sour flavor. There are many perspectives on this beyond the scope of my newsletter, but worth noting that oxalic acid is to be consumed in moderation.
I like that you get different flavors from different parts of the plant, and many people also eat the seeds.

lessons: Curly dock is a master in lessons of sharing and abundance, as anyone with a yard full of dock plants can attest. I often receive their roots as a gift from fellow gardeners and, when I make those roots into tincture or salve, someone else appears almost immediately who needs that medicine. It's truly remarkable, but it so far has happened 100% of the time I've worked with dock.

Elder (sambucus spp.)

medicinal properties: In Culpeper's time, there was an understanding that plants were connected to different planets and exhibited the properties of those planets. Dock was connected to Jupiter, species of Elder are connected to Venus. And for me, I've always seen those sorts of loving, passionate, and sensual properties we might connect to Venus embodied in this plant.
In addition to being beautiful to look at, Culpeper notes that Elder helps us expel phlegm and choler, reduce dropsy (or edema, a.k.a. swelling in tissues), and even helps promote menstruation and cures snake and dog bites. This all-purpose plant has many magical protective properties too, which I might dive into at some point but which, as with all the plants we look at, were once considered to be interwoven with the plant's medicine.

flavor: Elder requires some processing before eating: berries are turned into syrups and cough drops, flowers can be infused in vinegars and meads and wines or, of course, into liqueur (St. Germain is made with elderflower).
The ripe fruit has a deep, almost raspberry-blackberry flavor, but with less of a tangy bite, while the flowers are round and bright and taste like spring, with a floral flavor that fills your entire palate.

lessons: This incredibly generous plant teaches me that healing can take many forms. Throughout the growing season, we're offered many ways to gather healing blossoms and berries, both of which I was taught treat different types of symptoms (blossoms for a fever that runs hot, berries for a fever that runs cold).
The green berries aren't edible and are actually somewhat poisonous without processing (I ferment then pickle them), but they offer a lesson in transformation, going from inedible, hard fruits to tiny capers that burst in your mouth and that I enjoy far better than the one-dimensional flavor of store-bought capers.

Queen Anne's Lace (daucus carota)

medicinal profile: Culpeper refers to our friend Queen Anne's Lace as Wild Carrot: While the Queen herself was a contemporary to Culpeper, it doesn't seem that her name was used in conjunction with the plant until the Victorian period. He notes that it helps with dropsy, abdominal bloating and gas, kidney stones, fertility, and disinfecting some kinds of wounds (of course, he says all of this much more eloquently than I just did).
There were and are many different factors to consider when herbalists choose a plant to treat a condition, and so just eating a carrot might not necessarily help with all of these things. The wound treatment, for example, was made with honey, while fertility treatments were made with wine, each drawing out different plant compounds and prepared in different ways.
But there were many other aspects to consider as well, including astrological connections to plants, and the patient's humoral makeup. Like the carrot family to which Queen Anne's Lace belongs, Culpeper's medical treatments are complex and nuanced.

flavor: As you might expect, wild carrots taste like, well, carrots. I find them to be a bit earthier and deeper in flavor than many of their domesticated cousins. The seeds, like carrot seed, are great in soups and stews. Like celery seed, they're nice to have on hand for times when you want to flavor a stew but don't have the fresh veggie available.

lessons: Queen Anne's Lace invites us to observe the world closely. This member of the wild carrot family is most easily identified by their birds nest-shaped seed heads, which begin to form from the striking umbels of flowers around midsummer.

Apiaceae (carrot) is a botanical family that offers great rewards, but also asks great care in seeking them. While this family contains wonderful plant allies (like domestic carrots) it also includes some of the most notoriously deadly plants, like poison hemlock, which killed Socrates and which takes over a good patch of my yard in the early Spring, making foraging a slow and careful prospect. But if we exercise care, and look for the signs that differentiate these plants, we are rewarded with great abundance, delicious meals, and powerful (non-poisonous) medicine.

Pineappleweed (matricaria discoidea)

 medicinal profile: Pineappleweed is a relative of chamomile, and often called wild chamomile, but Culpeper refers to a different chamomile relative: mayweed (sometimes called stinking chamomile for its strong springtime odor). Chamomile is most famous as a calming, sleep-supporting tea, and Culpeper notes that it can be used to warm the womb as well. I note that it's part of the aster (daisy) family and as such, should be identified with care: As with the carrot family, there are some deadly daisy family members out there too.

flavor: Imagine if chamomile and a pineapple had a baby: Pineappleweed has a strong pineapple scent, especially when crushed, but the flavor itself is closer to chamomile tea. I often pick them while walking to a favorite brewery, then float a few blooms in a mug of pilsner.

lessons: This plant looks like yellow chamomile, and bursts from the earth suddenly in the late spring or early summer, gracing us with its cheery blooms and sunny disposition. Pineapple weed gets its common name from the fact that it smells exactly like pineapples, and is a reminder of the joy of sweet surprises, especially when we're present enough to slow down and enjoy them.

Coreopsis (coreopsis tinctoria)

medicinal profile: Culpeper does not mention coreopsis, which is a whole genus of flowering plants in the aster family, probably because he had no idea what it was: this genus is native to the North American continent. I have a lot to say on how we value Indigenous knowledge, and while I chose Culpeper for the bulk of these descriptions because it helps readers draw a clearer delineation between modern western medicine and the historic uses of plants, I'm excited to showcase a plant native to the US, too, because we can explore the many ways different Indigenous communities work with them, and we see decorative uses (as a dye), ceremonial use, and culinary use (as a tea), and medicinal use.
As a medicine, coreopsis was used to treat infections and diarrhea, and primarily used farther west in the country, though here the Cherokee used it as a red dye. Most likely its use was more widespread and varied than we have modern documentation of.

flavor: There are many species of coreopsis, and not all of them are edible as I understand it. This particular species, however, makes a tea that is slightly bitter, mildly floral, but also earthy and vegetal: In other words, it has a flavor profile similar to many other daisy family members, and can be nice to round out sometimes-cloying sweet flavors like cinnamon. One source also notes that it has been used as a coffee substitute.

lessons: Coreopsis and I have a relationship born in fits and starts, and is a reminder that learning is a continuous process, and curiosity and tenacity are worth bringing to any endeavor you are committed to.
For years, I tried to grow coreopsis in my garden without success, finally growing it this year and hopefully (knock on wood) succeeding at doing so. While it wouldn't grow the first few times, now it's everywhere, and I've learned so much about this plant's sweet disposition in the process. Coreopsis is a regular feature of many Atlanta-area scenic paths, and now is so much a part of my life that she regularly features in my dreams.

Mimosa (albizia julibrissin)

medicinal profile: Here is another plant who was a mystery to Culpeper, introduced to Europe as an ornamental tree about 100 years after he published his famous herbal. This tree, also called Persian Silk Tree, is native to Later it was introduced to the US, and here this member of the Fabaceae (legume) family has become invasive, and I love to gather the blooms and bark as medicine, flavoring, and to support for native species.
The medicinal use of these trees is widespread: A relative on the African continent treats diarrhea, wounds, and stomach ache, as well as irritability and insomnia. In Traditional Chinese Medicine, mimosa is the most widely prescribed treatment for insomnia, and one study notes it may help with memory. But the tree is also used to treat depression, and is often given the name "Tree of Happiness" as a result.  

flavor: I often struggle to describe the flavor of mimosa, which to me just tastes like happiness in a flower. It's bright, and floral, and lightly flavored, and sweet, wonderful in applications where the flower won't be overpowered by other botanicals or strong base spirits.

Lessons: There's an old house on my walk, several in fact, with mimosa trees out front. While invasive here, these trees also offer powerful medicine (and their flowers make delicious infusions and meads to boot).
By gathering their blooms in spring and summer and bark in the fall, we can nourish ourselves and help support biodiversity in our ecosystem. To me, they're always a reminder to engage in practices that fill my cup but also serve my larger community. It's colloquial name of "tree of happiness" is fitting, too: Mimosa flowers and bark are wonderful mood lifters, and it's hard not to feel good even just being in their presence.

Beech (fagus sylvatica)

medicinal profile: The last plant I encounter is beech, which would have been very familiar to Culpeper, so much so that he doesn't even offer a description of the tree, noting "I suppose it is needless to describe it, being already too well known to my countrymen." Beech leaves were used to cool hot, swollen skin, and of course the nuts were used as food for people and animals. He also says that the water in low-lying beech groves is restorative to wash in, suggesting a medicinal power of this tree so profound it extends to its surroundings.

On this walk, within just a mile, we've encountered medicinal plants, and medical practices, from multiple continents and cultures, a record of a landscape shaped by our own preferences, traditions, trade practices, travels, and the land itself.

flavor: Beech nuts are tannic, but not aggressively so, and slightly bitter. I find them to be slightly vegetal in flavor too, and I imagine the specifics depend on which beech you're working with. They have distinctive, pointy husks and are fun to gather (with gloves) in late autumn.  

Lessons: As I near my home at the end of my walk, I pass by a neighbor's house I've walked by hundreds of times before, and notice a beech tree that somehow, in almost a decade of living here, I've never seen before. This beech tree was hiding in plain sight, no small feat for a tree to accomplish.

I've often been taught that plants come along in our lives when they feel they're needed, something I believe to be true and have seen many times in my own life. When we pay attention to the world around us, we're offered the opportunity to gather and save food and medicine, and perhaps to have a bit more of what we need to survive and thrive when we need it.

A note on loss

A week after I scheduled this essay, I felt drawn to visit the plants again, with a sense of urgency that offered my feet barely enough time for me to pull on shoes before they were rushing up the pavement to the path's entrance.

I knew the city had plans to widen the path, to mow this tiny ecosystem down in favor of an expensive monoculture of identical condos. I know, too, that gentrification and densification are complex subjects that stretch beyond what this one newsletter issue can cover. I also know change is the one constant, though I have opinions about how we can shape change to best support our human and earth communities.   

What I didn't realize was how urgent it was to write this essay when I did, or that this experience of nature in a city was so ephemeral.

As I walked down the path, I saw many of the friends I wrote about above razed and demolished, crushed under heavy tires and careless feet.
I've left the love letter as it is when I first wrote it, even though it no longer reflects reality, to honor what I adore about this city, and what I hope some day we can have again.

There is one elder bush left, out of what were dozens, cut down right as their berries began to ripen to feed the birds. The baskets of Queen Anne's Lace had just begun to furl up into seeds. The pineapple weed was entirely obliterated, presumably smashed into the mud at the path's edge. And the few coreopsis who remained only did so because they were tucked behind larger plants. Of the many plants I've loved here, probably 3/4, or more, are gone.

I wondered, not for the first time, when we'll remember that our love and our progress can grow hand in hand, that we can move forward without completely wiping clean the landscape we already have.

I gathered what seeds and plants I could save, and grieved the rest.

News

• I'll be speaking on October 1st at the Decatur Book Festival this year. If you're in the Atlanta metro area, please mark your calendar to join me!

• For Patreon patrons, I’ve added some fun new benefits to the top few tiers including custom artwork + essay commissions, free fermentation Q+A, and more.
  My hope is that, no matter what dollar amount one pledges, they’re still getting something valuable in return (if you’re a paid Substack subscriber, you get the same benefits as the ‘button’ tier on Patreon. Thank you for your support!)
  Give it a look, and sign up, here.

• I have been enjoying writing articles recently focusing on gardening tips, compost bins, as well as a composting guide.
  I've been writing commerce guides too, like this one on pressure canners, which is new-ish to me but lets me flex my research and writing muscles in different ways than I do for most pieces.

• I collaborated with the good folks at Missing Witches (who I interviewed last month) to create a meditation and ritual all around the harvest festival Lammas.
  It was a lot of fun, and I got to showcase some of the research I've been doing in finding ways to do energy work within my own ancestral traditions.
  
  Paid subscribers + Patreon patrons can find it in our Dropbox folder of resources, along with a newly added fermentation recipe+tips handout.

• The Southern Food & Beverage Museum has partnered with Nunez Community College to create a research center, which opens in October. They’re seeking donations of items, as well as funds, to build the Center out. I’m very excited for this, and to have a resource documenting, preserving, and sharing southern foodways. Learn more at this link.
  If you want to learn more about founder Liz Williams, here’s a link to our interview from earlier this year.
  

• This year, I’m inviting readers to join me in brief vision journaling exercises each month to help us intentionally craft a meaningful and hopefully joyful 2022. You can learn more and see the year’s prompts here.
  This month’s journaling prompt is:
  What does my business (or career, if you aren’t self-employed) look like moving forward? How do I define success for my business/career? What activities am I doing, and what are the results of my work?

To Read

I'm digging into this study on Open Access and agricultural research this week, which explores attitudes of agricultural researchers towards OA and data sharing. If you, like me, do work with both food and information (or are just curious about both) it may be a good read for you.

I just finished the audiobook of Cal Flyn's Islands of Abandonment: Nature Rebounding in the Post-Human Landscapeand loved it, finding it in equal parts challenging and hopeful. A good companion to Robert Macfarlane's Underland: A Deep Time Journey, too.

This piece on a pickle recipe that survived the 1980s AIDS crisis, which resonated heavily with me and likely will to many of us who lost people during that epidemic.

There have been some wonderful pieces on nut trees crossing my path recently, including this one on Georgian walnuts and this one on chestnuts.

I love to see projects that support the well-being, learning, and creativity of incarcerated folks, like this piece on a prison garden. If you haven't already, I also strongly encourage you to check out Common Good, who I've taught with and who do incredible work!

I was also excited to see that my post on the foraging origins of booze inspired Pat Willard in her own newsletter!

To Make: Icelandic Wound Charm Salve

After my visit to Iceland last year, I remarked that I feel closer to the Earth in Iceland than in many places, and that this closeness to nature is part of the culture there, manifesting in many ways including herbal salves for sale in the airport duty free shop.

This salve, simple labeled 'wound charm,' contains ingredients I recognize and use here, and over the last year I've developed my own recipe based on it. There are a couple differences (a different, but very close, species of dock, for example), but this recipe mimics the Icelandic unguent in form and function.

It's absolute magic on small cuts and scrapes and on bug bites, quickly becoming a summer staple in my household. If you enjoy making your own salves, I hope you'll give this one a try.

1 c fresh yarrow flowers, packed

1/2 c fresh chickweed, packed

1/4 c fresh mugwort (flowers and/or leaves), packed

1/4 c fresh violet leaves, packed

1/3 c dried calendula flowers (or 1/2 c packed fresh flowers)

1 4" piece of fresh curly dock root (if you're in Europe, you can use dooryard dock as in the original recipe)

2 c extra virgin olive oil

2 oz grated beeswax

-Simmer water in a large saucepan, placing a heatproof bowl on top to create a double boiler.

-Add all ingredients except beeswax, and allow to slowly infuse for about 1 hour, gently stirring and pressing occasionally (a wooden spoon works best here) for maximum extraction.

-Line a strainer with cheesecloth and place over a bowl, straining your liquid into it. Allow to cool slightly so it's safe to handle.

-Wrap up your cheesecloth and squeeze as much oil as you can from your strained plant matter.*

-Place the oil in a saucepan and add the grated beeswax. Heat slowly, stirring constantly, until beeswax is just melted and remove from heat.

-Quickly pour into heatproof containers (like small canning jars) and cool.

-Store at room temperature out of direct sunlight.

*I save this cheesecloth bundle and drop it in my bath along with a handful of Epsom salts.

*There is a lot to say about our understanding of authority in herbal sources, and the colonial history of herbalism, both of which intertwine with the use of this source. They're outside the scope of this essay, but we saw a glimpse of it in my discussion of coreopsis, and I may touch on this more deeply in a future issue. It also goes without saying, but I'm not encouraging you to use a newsletter issue to treat or prevent any disease, which is well beyond the scope (and legality!) of a Substack. I include these notes to help you understand how people use these plants, and have used them in the past.