All Creatures Great and Wall - Flora - Part 1

As Iwallk I encounter every sort of life form. Often it is the plant kingdom that makes the biggest impression on me. Knowing a few things about botany, certain useful herbs and flowers seem to stick out everywhere. Admittedly plants are not “creatures,” per sé, but they still register at least in my mind as important living players in the environment. Some people DO think that they have a kind of consciousness (myself included). In fact, without getting in to it too much in this post, I have come to believe that each plant species has its own “spirit,” with all individuals in that species therefore being like a collective – if diffuse - personality. And so I will focus on the plants – the local flora – in these next two posts; moving on to a discussion about the local fauna in future posts.

MINT

Google Image: Spearmint with purple spires.

This year, spending most of my time in South Portland, I have seen a great preponderance of mint-like species (genus: Mentha, in the Lamiaceae family). The purple, pink or white flowers and the soft, green leaves of the spearmint plant (M. spicata) flourish in the cool, wet spring and sunny, humid summers here in Maine. For fresh breath, to settle one's stomach or just for some refreshment on a walk, I suggest pulling off about 3-4 inches of flowers from the tip of a mint spire. Make sure to check it for bugs (there shouldn't be many, as the volatile oils in mint makes the plant unappealing to insects). The taste is very strong, sweet like sugar initially and then morphing into a very “cool” long-lasting aftertaste. 

A handful of these flowers can certainly calm my stomach if I have eaten something especially rich or acidic. According to Andrew Chevallier's Encyclopedia of Herbal Medicine (2000), peppermint (a hybrid of M. aquatica) – a much stronger tasting plant with more of those volatile oils (menthol—35-55% and menthone—10-40%) - is even better for this purpose...

Peppermint is excellent for the digestive system, increasing the flow of digestive juices and bile and relaxing the muscles of the gut. It reduces colic, cramps and gas, it helps diarrhea and relieves a spastic colon (often the cause of constipation).

Someday I'd love to have a section of my future herb garden reserved only for collecting and growing mint. There are dozens of varieties and cultivars available now. As an example, one of my favorites is “Chocolate Mint.” It is a light green color with smaller leaves and it smells JUST like chocolate. I haven't seen it around much in recent years. It was kind of a fad back in the mid-1990's.

LAMIACEAE HERBS

Often people don't realize that many other species that we love for their culinary enhancement also enjoy co-membership in the Lamiaceae family. Oregano and marjoram (Origanum vulgare and O. majorana, respectively), sage (Salvia, a huge genus of over 900 species, S. officinalis, S. tricolor and S. splendens in the case of South Portland) and thyme (Thymus vulgaris) can be found growing in a “naturalized” state and as decorative ornamentation all over the place. Worth honorable mention, but belonging to a different genus (Apiaceae), is the wonderful and highly nutritious plant, parsley (Petroselinum crispum—a VERY healthy specimen of which is located in the plants on the little bridge near Hannaford's supermarket). The City of South Portland has populated many of its street-side planters with these herbs. And they grow quite readily, with very little assistance once planted. I have to admit helping myself to moderate amounts of these public displays. Often I return the next week and they are even bigger and bushier, perhaps thanks to my little white thefts.

Besides being used in cooking, the herbs of the Lamiaceae family were originally recognized for their medicinal properties, being very effective in treating various health problems. Today, the northern states in the US are not typically as well-known for their medicinal herbs as the southern states. This is probably due to the longer growing season down south. But it is truly surprising just how many medicinal and even entheogenic plants (“entheogenic” being a term that literally means, “generation of the god within,” used by ethnobotanists to describe traditionally psychoactive plants) grow in New England. Whether native or introduced, these plants now grow quite well in states like Maine. I've already described the benefits of mint. Briefly here is an overview of the medicinal benefits for the other plants mentioned above.

Oregano and Marjoram contain volatile oils (caracrol, thymol, betabisabolene, caryophyllene, linalool and borneol, among others) that are all powerful antiseptics. These two herbs stimulate the production of bile, help with flatulence and have been used for over a hundred years to treat respiratory conditions such as cough, tonsillitis, bronchitis and asthma.

Oregano growing in a planter, South Portland, Maine.

Marjoram growing in a planter, South Portland, Maine.

Sage contains up to 50% thujone (a psychoactive substance that if taken in excess can cause nerve damage, whose history will also be discussed in more detail later) and several diterpenes and triterpenes. It is estrogenic (easing hot flashes and dizziness during menopause), antiseptic, a mild tranquilizer, helps to prevent sweating and may help to delay the onset of Alzheimer's.

Google Image: Sage Tricolor.

Thyme contains volatile oils like thymol and methylchavicol along with several flavinoids. It is said to have anti-aging properties and extracts have been shown to have antibacterial activity which is helpful in the treatment of stomach ulcers.

Thyme growing in a planter, South Portland, Maine.

Parsley also contains volatile oils (20% myristicin, 18% apiole and many other terpenoids), flavinoids, phthalides, coumarins and significant amounts of vitamins A, C and E. Surprisingly, it also contains high levels of iron. It has diuretic properties, antioxidants too and is an anti-inflammatory. Parsley has the strange ability to mask strong odors, particularly garlic when they are eaten together. Frankly, there are so many other medicinal uses for parsley that listing them all would exceed the summary purpose of this post. I guess the point is: eat that sprig of parsley garnish. It may be even better for you that the food it sits beside! It should be noted that though the plant is very safe, caution should be taken when ingesting the seeds, which can be toxic in high doses.

Parsley growing in a planter, South Portland, Maine.

MUGWORT

Mugwort growing in Thomas Wright Park, South Portland, Maine.

On an recent visit to Thomas Knight Park in South Portland – a small grassy area featuring a small beach and rarely-used dock space under the Casco Bay Bridge – I was easily able to pick out three more plants growing there that could be used for other-than-decorative purposes.

Artemsia vulgaris, known in the 19^th Century, when thoroughly dried and smoked in a corn cob pipe, as “sailor's tobacco” (also known to be a mosquito repellant comparable to citronella when crushed fresh and sprinkled around a picnic area), is VERY abundant in this small park and in Maine generally. It likes the poor soil beside roadways – being referred to as a “wayside” plant. It's cousin, A. absinthium, is the herb famously distilled into the now re-legalized liquor known as, “absinthe.” All Artemisia species contain thujone, a psychoactive chemical whose effects at higher does can be compared to cannabis. But as stated above, and unlike cannabis, it can cause nerve damage in higher doses. For many decades absinthe (along with opium and hashish) was a favorite mind-expander of Parisian artists and writers around the turn of the 19^th to 20^th Century. Rumor had it that drinking it too often could make one insane. It was more likely that it was the large amounts of alcohol imbibed (rather than the thujone) that should be held responsible for any wackiness that ensued from the ingestion of absinthe.

The Thomas Wright Park plant, A. vulgaris (much weaker than A. absinthium), also known as “mugwort,” has other non-ingestable uses. Some people dry the plant, strip off the foliage and rub the leaves between their hands, creating a cotton-like material. That puffy material is then sewn into small pillows as a fragrant sleep aid. It is said to “inspire dreaming” and can be burned as an incense before bedtime for that purpose by either making a “smudge” (hot coals to which dried plant material is applied), forming a cone out of the soft material and lighting the tip, or just burning the dried stems like stick-incense. I have done all of these things many times and it certainly does have a gorgeous fragrance. It is interesting that the smell is also very similar to burning cannabis, though sweeter.

Traditionally, European anecdotes describe mugwort as being used to assist in childbirth by being tied to the left thigh of the mother while in delivery. It is unclear why the left thigh was chosen over the right. It was also said to speed up labor by tying it around the waist of the expectant mother, left to hang below the navel. There is some contradiction in the ancient literature between the Chinese application for preventing miscarriage and the European use as a uterine stimulant.

WILD ROSE

Wild Roses at Thomas Wright Park, South Portland, Maine.

At Thomas Wright Park, and all over the Maine coast, wild roses (genus: Rosa) bloom in great profusion. The most common ones (and the ones I refer to in this post) are pink or white petaled (R. rugosa). This has to be one of my favorite plants to encounter while walking. Its beautiful fragrance is really quite powerful and its petals can be collected to eat or dried and steeped for tea or crushed I a pile as a natural air freshener. Personally, I enjoy eating them.

Even though we casually call it “wild,” it is not native to North America or Europe. The rose plant originally comes from Mesopotamia, and Iran in particular, where it graced the courts of kings and sheiks. The Romans imported it and used it as food, eating the petals in salads. It was planted by the first European settlers and had no trouble adapting to the New England climate. Now it is considered a naturalized plant. The more primitive the rose, the more sweet and nutritious the petals are. The R. rugosa species of rose has the sweetest petals I have tasted. The pink flowers are a bit more fruity tasting than the white ones. In Thomas Wright Park there are dozens of rose bushes and a trip there for me usually consists of harvesting a plastic shopping bag full of bright pink petals. Rose have fallen out of favor today as a medicine, but they deserve to be re-examined as recent studies have shown them to have anti-depressant qualities. Even simply smelling the fragrance can raise one's spirits.

The hips (seeds pods that develop and mature first into green fruit early in July and then redden as autumn approaches) can be eaten raw, cooked or pickled. The outer shell of the hip is rather tough. And the seeds inside – though edible - are a bit corn or pomegranate-like in appearance (though smaller kernels) and in some species can have a bothersome hairiness to them. They tend to become more tough and are usually discarded in favor of the fleshier hip walls. The can also taste bit like apple—being from the same family. You would want to cut the green hips in July or wait until after frost in the fall if you want to harvest them in their reddened form. The post-frost harvest allows the freezing temperatures to break the cell membranes in the hip walls allowing for a softer texture. There are many ways to prepare rose hips. I am going to try blanching and pickling them fresh or using a brine solution. They can also be sauteed in olive oil with a little red wine, lemon grass, chives, salt and black pepper.

[Please check back for Part 2]

SOURCES

Booth, Martin, Cannabis: A History, Thomas Dunne Books, New York, 2004.

Booth, Martin, Opium: A History, St. Martin's Griffin, New York, 1999.

Chevallier, Andrew, Encyclopedia of Herbal Medicine, DK, New York, 2000.

Novak, F. A., The Pictorial Encyclopedia of Plants and Flowers, Crown Press,

        New York, 1966, p. 395.

Sonday, Rebecca, Convolvulus arvensis (pdf), Plant Diversity Website, 2008.

Weier, T. Elliot, Stocking, C. Ralph, Barbour, Michel G., Botany: An Introduction

        to Plant Biology, John Wiley and Sons, New York, 1974, pp. 644-670.