The Magical World of Plants

 When I was a girl, I wanted to be a doctor. That was after I wanted to be an explorer in deepest Africa, and then a mail carrier bringing all those precious letters to people. There were so many professions to choose from! But by the time I got to high school, my dream of being a doctor was firmly established. And fortunately I grew up in a local culture where women were not excluded from important roles. I subscribed to Scientific American, read up on medical discoveries, and was really psyched about my future. Then I went to college. You would think that in college they would have encouraged even young women to follow their dreams. But time and again, my advisor discouraged me from pursuing that dream. He finally said that this kind of education would be wasted on me, for I would just get married and have children. And I was so deflated by that opinion that indeed I ultimately dropped out of college, got married, and had children. I doubt that my advisor's attitude would be as common today, but this was a long time ago, and women were supposed to stick to their traditional roles. 

When I was pregnant with my first child, I suddenly became interested in plants. I guess there was a nurturing gene or enzyme that woke up a new part of me, and I began to beg cuttings from friends for houseplants, and dug up and planted my first garden. All through the years of motherhood, I not only nurtured my children, but also lots and lots of plants. Then one day, I discovered plants that healed. This was a new world for me. I lived in a community of somewhat alternative folks, some of whom knew about plants that were used for medicine. And I begin eagerly learning. My vegetable garden began to include medicinal plants, and my kitchen shelves started to contain tinctures and salves from those special plants.

Now many years later, I still love plants and making plant medicine. I have a large garden here at Prairie Hill that is the home of many perennial medicinals, and they are beautiful to me. This year, for some mysterious reason, things have grown more quickly and bigger than usual. As you come into my garden, there is an elecampane plant that has stretched a huge blossom right over the path. To enter, you have to gently push it aside, like opening a door. And then you come to a whole line of blooming elecampane. The roots are good for the lungs, for colds and bronchitis and coughs. One day years ago when I was selling healing tinctures at the farmers market in Iowa City, a Mexican woman was overjoyed to see the elecampane tincture. She said that in Mexico, they used this herb all the time, but she hadn't found any here. She hurried home to take it to her little boy, who had a chest cold.

Using plants for health and healing is as old as humans. And in the literature I've seen on the ancient use of medicinals, most often it was the women who became the healers, the experts on what plant was good for what condition. I love to imagine a village way back in time where there were women healers, perhaps even one main one, who knew where the right plants grew to keep the community healthy. And gradually, with experimentation, the repertoire grew larger and more effective. When groups of early humans migrated to different areas, they brought along the seeds and plants that were most important to them, including the ones that kept them healthy. Still today, this is happening. Back when the European settlers came to the "new world", they made sure to bring the plants that seemed indispensable to their lives. And the seeds of other plants got brought here accidentally on their shoes (like the low-growing plantain that thrives along paths where the soil is compacted and which is a magical skin-healer).

Sometimes I'm just amazed at the incredible world of plants here on this planet. Each one has evolved into its own form, its own way of reproducing, its own flowers, leaves, roots. Even one plant is a marvel to me, its intricate life form far different from mine, growing on its own out there in the world. Then when I take in the millions of different kinds of plants, it's almost too much to fathom. Plants are living beings, and thanks to some studies, we know that they are much more aware than we used to imagine. Not only do they communicate with each other both underground and out in the open, but they receive communication from us (look up the lie detector tests done 50 years ago). I can sit near a beautiful plant and feel a connection with it, and that feeling is good, even joyful. In a broad sense, the plant world is a part of my family. And of course that's the way it should be, for without plants, none of us would be alive.