Blog Party! Summer Weeds

Yay to Darcey for getting the blog parties rolling again. You can see the whole listing at her wonderful blog:
http://desertmedicinewoman.blogspot.com/

Yellow Dock (Rumex crispus)

I love to love yellow dock.

This pesky weed that is despised by so many offers us so many uses whether it be nutritious food, potent medicine, or even beauty in the way of a brilliant yellow dye or a unique flower arrangement.

Leaves as food and Medicine:
Yellow dock grows all over the United States. It is in the buckwheat, or Polygonaceae family along with rhubarb and sheep’s sorrel. Where I live in the Northeastern Cascades of Washington State, yellow dock leaves are some of the first to appear in the spring. I’ve even seen them growing right out of the shallow snow in the late winter/early spring.

The young leaves are a wonderful spring green. You can eat small amounts raw in salads, or cook them in soups or quiche. Because the leaves contain oxalic acids it’s best not to overeat them raw, and avoid them completely if you have a history of oxalate kidney stones. The leaves are slightly sour when young, becoming increasingly so as they get older.

The cooling and astringent leaves can be used topically to reduce swelling from irritations. I’ve used them on cold sores with varying results as well as stinging nettle rashes with better results.

Yellow Dock Frittata:
This breakfast can be made with any wild greens, but yellow dock gives it a nice lemony taste.

1 cup yellow dock leaves, steamed and well drained
6 eggs
2 Tbsp. Raw cream
salt and pepper to taste
1 medium potato
½ minced onion or leek
2 tbsp. butter
1 cup grated goat cheese
1 tsp. dried basil
1 T mustard

Peel and finely chop the potato. Sauté onion in butter until tender in a cast iron skillet. Add the potato and sauté for about 5 minutes. Whisk eggs, cream, basil, cheese, mustard, salt and pepper together in a bowl. Add the yellow dock greens.

Preheat the broiler in your over.
Add the egg mixture on top of the potatoes and onions. Cook on low heat on the stove top for about 10 minutes until the bottom of frittata is set, but top is still runny.

Put skillet under the broiler for about five minutes or until the top portion is nicely browned.


Seeds as food and decoration:
During the spring and summer, long green flower stalks spring up from among the leaves. By June they are fully formed and by July or August they are abundant rust colored seeds. These are easily recognized in fields and growing alongside the roads. They seem to beckon me each year to harvest the bounty.

To harvest the seeds I cut down the seed stalks and place them in a paper bag. I then keep this bag on its side and leave it outside overnight. You’d be amazed at all the creatures that make their home in the yellow docks seeds. I encourage them to leave peaceably in this way.

The next day I pick through the seeds removing any debris and old leaves. These seeds can then be ground with a mortar and pestle or in food processor.

Why go to all this trouble you ask? Why dock seed crackers of course. My mentor Karen Sherwood taught me this recipe and years later it’s still a favorite in our house.

Dock Seed Crackers:
Ingredients:
one cup of dock seed flour
one teaspoon of salt
and one cup flour of your choice. (My favorites are whole-wheat pastry flour and rye flour.)

1. Mix in enough water to make pliable, but not sticky dough.
2. On a well-floured surface, roll dough as thin as possible. Cut into desired shapes or transfer it whole to a well-oiled cookie sheet.
3. Bake for 10 -12 minutes at 350 or until crisp.
4. I love these hearty crackers with goat cheese.

The flower stalks also make a fabulous addition to flower arrangements. You can use them when they are green, or later when they are fully mature. I’ve seen them placed with other flowers or even as decoration on their own.

Roots as medicine, dye and fairy tables:
The root is the most commonly used portion of yellow dock. I harvest the roots in the late summer and early fall. They like to grow in hard rocky soil. (Or maybe we just have an abundance of hard rocky soil and it happens to grow there.) In either case I have found that a digging stick is oftentimes more helpful than a shovel in getting the roots up.

The root is a long taproot that has a brown outer covering. Underneath this brown sheath is a brilliant yellow that will knock your socks off. It’s no surprised that this was traditionally used as a dye. When you slice the root you will find growth rings similar to a tree. By counting the rings you’ll discover how old the plant is.

These brilliant yellow slices with beautiful rings rippling out make fabulous fairy furniture. You can create your own designs with a young friend. Although the color will fade as they dry, these slices can also be used as temporarily colorful earrings and necklaces.

Yellow dock root is bitter, astringent and cooling making it a great choice for clearing liver heat with signs of slow digestion that can include a lump or heavy feeling in the abdominals along with constipation. Generally described as an alterative, yellow dock (as are most alteratives) is indicated for clearing damp heat conditions.

Yellow dock root contains small amounts of anthraquinone glycosides, that are believed to stimulate the bowels as a laxative. Also being a bitter herb it helps to stimulate various digestive juices which in turn stimulates the peristaltic action of the bowels. Whether yellow dock acts directly on the bowels, or supports healthy digestion through its bitter properties, the result is a gentle effect to clear food stagnation and get those bowels moving.

It is also appropriate for damp heat signs in the blood that surface on the skin such as oozy, wet, red (hot), irritated rashes. I’ve read several accounts of it being used topically as a wash for ringworm.

It is commonly thought that yellow dock contains high amounts of iron and is frequently used for anemia especially anemia associated with pregnancy. There is a growing consensus however, that yellow dock does not actually contain large amounts of iron, but rather it helps the body to better utilize iron. When we view yellow dock in this fashion it makes sense to combine it with nettle leaf or to make a concoction of the root with an equal part of black strap molasses added.

Rich in minerals yellow dock infuses well in apple cider vinegar. This can be used as a base for salad dressings, or simply taken before meals to aid digestion. Additionally it can be taken to relieve food stagnation and constipation following a meal.

Besides vinegar and water, yellow dock root can also be extracted in alcohol. This year I hope to infuse the root in honey.

Although I have no experience with this myself, it’s worth noting that historically yellow dock salve was used externally on tumors.

Last fall I made a video about harvesting yellow dock root and then infusing it in vinegar. You can watch this at www.herbmentor.com.

I love to love yellow dock. It is abundant, easy to harvest, and has such a rich history of use for practically every portion of the plant.

Islam deprives women of vitamin D

Acharya S has an excellent post on her blog Truth Be Known, titled Muslim Women, Vitamin D, and Osteomalacia. I highly recommend taking a look at it. She quite rightly states:

"In the global debate regarding the dress codes for Muslim women, one important factor is often overlooked: The fact that depriving a human being from live-giving sunlight and air represents physical torture. Indeed, this form of torture has been used for centuries in prisons."

Acharya has written several excellent books on the solar myth that forms the basis of Christianity, including The Christ Conspiracy, Suns of God, and Who Was Jesus? I recommend all of them to anyone who wants to understand the roots of Christianity.

Top Ten Problems With Applying The Paleolithic Diet Principles: Numbers 6, 5, 4, and 3

6) Eating only lean meats and 5) avoiding red meat and 4) avoiding saturated fats and 3) eating lots of monounsaturated fats instead

I wanted to deal with all of these together because they are so intertwined and mutually supported by myths about wild game and hunter gatherer habits.

Since most people have the belief that we have to avoid “arterycloggingsaturatedfat” to avoid heart disease and a myriad other evils, and some authorities assure us that wild game carries very little fat, many people try to base their “Paleolithic” diets on skinless poultry and fish, and use olive and canola oils to get a high monounsaturated fat intake.

I made this mistake myself in my early attempts at paleodiet.

Some authors have asserted that ancestral Paleolithic diets were based on lean meats, low in saturated fats, and high in monounsaturated fats. They support these claims by citing the facts that muscle meat of the typical wild game species contains much less fat than meat from a grain-fed steer. It is true, the muscle meat of wild game has much less total fat than the muscle meat of grain fed animals.

However, as noted by Stephan in The Myth of the High Protein Diet, the ethnographic evidence clearly indicates that hunters did not hunt “typical” animals, nor eat only the lean muscle meat. Hunters universally preferred, pursued, and whenever possible brought home the bison (or other animal) that carried a large amount of fat.

Some authors have asserted that hunter-gatherers ate diets rich in monounsaturated fats, but low in saturated fats, primarily getting their fats from bone marrow. They frequently cite Cordain et al, who found that monounsaturated fat forms 60 to 67 percent and saturated fat only about 20 to 27 percent of marrow fat of North American deer, elk, and antelope (European Journal of Clinical Nutrition (2002) 56, 181–191). These authors recommend avoiding animal fats while using large amounts of olive or canola oil to achieve a high intake of monounsaturated fats, supposedly to mimic Paleolithic diets.

Although the data collected by Cordain et al affirms the high monounsaturated fat content of marrow, it does not prove that hunters had a diet high in monounsaturates and low in saturated fats. One must ask, does the marrow provide the bulk of the fat on an animal? Of course not! On any healthy animal, subcutaneous fat will far outweigh the marrow fat.

How much fat could inland people get from hunting large, wild grazing animals? Let me quote from my book:

“ Even if a 1500-pound bison had only 3 percent of its body weight as stored fat (a very lean animal), the yield would be 45 pounds of highly saturated fat, providing 157,500 calories. By inciting the animals to stampede off a cliff or into a trap, the American Plains tribes typically killed from a few dozen to 200 bison at a time––yielding from 1600 to 9000 pounds of depot fat.”

The subcutaneous fat of wild game has a very high proportion of saturated fats. Cordain et al reported that saturated fat forms 60 to 65 percent of the subcutaneous fat of of North American deer, elk, and antelope (and monounsaturated fats form only about 25 percent of those animals’ subcutaneous fat). (European Journal of Clinical Nutrition (2002) 56, 181–191). For comparison, only about 45 percent of grain-fed beef fat consists of saturated fats.

If you live by hunting simple efficiency of effort dictates that you will seek the largest possible prey. Kill one bison and you have at least 500 pounds of meat; you would have to kill at least 100 birds to get the same food supply. The cave paintings and rubbish heaps left by our ancestors indicate they preferred hunting large animals including aurochs, mammoths, horses, deer, whales, and the like, not small game like chickens. Recent hunter-gatherers also focused their efforts on large mammals, not birds and lizards.

For example, Australian Aborigines and other South Sea tribes hunted dugong (a sea mammal). All edible parts of animals were consumed, including organ meats and fats. Also known as sea cows, dugongs weigh between 500 and 1800 pounds, and inhabit shallow tropical waters. People hunt them with harpoons and gill nets. An average adult dugong provides 24 to 56 liters (6 to 15 gallons) of oil.

Native American Plains bison hunters ate some of their bison meat fresh, but much was dried.
They ground the dried meat to a powder and mixed it with berries and an equal weight of bison fat to make pemmican, a cake that remains solid in storage. Plains tribes made and stored enough pemmican for their own needs and had a surplus that was a favored trade item. During the historic fur trade, the Plains tribe traded tons of pemmican.

You can’t make pemmican without using a highly saturated fat; unsaturated fats will not form a cake because they remain too soft even at 32 degrees F.

Those who fear animal fats simply do not understand that their own human fat as as much saturated fat as beef or pork fat. Take a look at this chart from my book:

Fat Source	Saturated Fats(%)	Monounsaturated Fats(%)	Polyunsaturated Fats(%)
Animal
Human	42.9	46.9	10.2
Beef Tallow	47.8	49.6	2.6
Lard	40.0	50.0	10.0
Butter	62.6	28.6	3.4
Chicken fat	29.6	44.5	21.0
Vegetable
Corn	8.0	24.2	58.8
Flax	9.6	17.0	68.8
Olive	14.3	77.1	9.3
Palm	49.3	36.8	9.6
Sesame	14.0	39.7	41.2

As you can see, lard, beef tallow, and palm oil all have a fatty acid profile very similar to human body fat. You will note also that the profile of butter is very similar to that of wild game subcutaneous fat as reported by Cordain et al (above).

In fact, the fatty acid profile of the fats of various mammals remains remarkably similar from species to species. This indicates that evolution has favored and conserved the production and use of saturated fats in mammals.

Why? Well, for one thing, mammals have a body temperature of approximately 100 degrees F, and a continuous supply of oxygen. Heat and oxygen easily damage unsaturated fats, not so for saturated fats. Further, at 100 degrees F, monounsaturates and polyunsaturates are too fluid for many of the ways mammals use fats.

As a general rule, when you look at nature, organisms that inhabit cold climates or have low body temperatures (e.g. flax, salmon) have a predominance of unsaturated fats in their tissues, and organisms that inhabit warm climates or have tropical body temperatures (coconut, palm, humans, cows) have a high proportion of saturated fats in their tissues. This is simple adaptation to environment--a salmon could not inhabit cold waters with a high body content of saturates, because it would freeze solid.

That means, between meals or during fasts, your own adipose tissue releases into your blood stream a collection of fatty acids very similar to any other mammalian fat. Evolution has designed us to produce, store, and use saturated fats for both structural and metabolic purposes. You need have no fear of saturated fats. You can eat fatty meats and animal fats; you don't have to strive for a high monounsaturated fat intake; and you can enjoy the lip-smacking deliciousness of it all.

Morels and two beauties in the Figwort family

We headed out to the forest today to gather morel mushrooms. My husband brought home a decent amount, but my luck was more in the plant kingdom. It was a hot and dusty day and I headed down to a creek to cool off and found some monkey flower and American speedwell (Veronica americana). Both of them are in the Figwort family, both like to live near streams, and neither of which I had seen in the wild before.










Monkey flower became a dear friend of mine this winter while I was, in technical terms, freaking out about our steep, curvy, icy driveway that I was sure to plummet over the edge of every time I needed to leave our cabin.

Kiva, an herbalist living in the wilderness of New Mexico has the following to say about Monkey flower: (excerpted from her fabulous post on nervine differentials)

Monkeyflower (Mimulus spp.) - Neutral, moist - Flowering tops - Sweet

For sadness and stress accompanied by a sense of joylessness and lack of wonder. A true sunshine remedy that brightens the spirits and can alleviate mild to moderate depression. It has also proven helpful for when someone is wound up on stimulants of any kind, to bring them back to earth from a hyped up, strung out place. Likewise, it can very useful when someone is hysterical to the point of being paranoid, unreasonable and frantic. It won’t sedate them into a stoned out kind of place, merely bring them back to the present moment and solid ground. I’ve also seen it help alleviate chronic insomnia with restlessness and frequent waking.

I am less familiar with American Speedwell or Veronica americana. Another figwort this has opposite leaves and blue flowers with four irregular petals and two stamens. (Most figworts have four stamens).

It's a tasty potherb and is also used as a diuretic, astringent and expectorant for unproductive coughs.

And lastly here are some beautiful morels. You can read more about our adventures on the blog my husband Xavier is overseeing at: http://fourseasonsprehistoricprojects.blogspot.com/

Announcing new Blog and Website: Four Seasons Prehistoric Projects

There are a lot of primitive skills schools blooming in the United States right now and to that I say "hallelujah".

I have spent years studying the skills and I even worked at a primitive school for several years - the skills were what first interested me in studying herbalism.

And it is with all of this experience that I can say that Lynx Vilden's school of Four Season Prehistoric Projects is the most comprehensive and in-depth school that exists within the US if not the world. What makes Lynx's school different from the rest is that she doesn't practice the skills in her free time or on the weekends, rather it is her way of life. Lynx constantly amazes me in her ability to push her own limits in re-discovering the ancient way of life.

Her classes are fun and approachable whether you are new to the skills or have been practicing for years.


At other schools you would spend thousands and thousands of dollars to learn hypothetical theory. Lynx teaches from 20 years of experience for the best price offered in the primitive skills arena.


It is with this enthusiasm that I am highlighting her new website and blog. Join Lynx and the students as they prepare for an entire month living in a stone age technology.

Please pass on to other primitive skills enthusiasts!

Visit her blog at:
http://fourseasonsprehistoricprojects.blogspot.com/

From the homepage of her new website:

http://sites.google.com/site/fourseasonsprehistoricprojects/

Welcome to Four Seasons Prehistoric Projects!

We strive to "live" in the wilderness, rather than "survive" it to get back to civilization.

At Four Seasons Prehistoric Projects we aim to live sustainably and in harmony with the Earth. We believe that this is best achieved not by desperately waiting for new technologies to emerge but by embracing the knowledge and wisdom of our ancestors who lived that way for many thousands of years.

Therefore, our programs focus on re-kindling and applying the practical skills based on ancient knowledge, experiencing the inter-dependency necessary in community living, and nurturing an appreciation for the Earth as a living organism.

We do this through intensive hands-on wilderness living skills training, teaching people how to harvest and transform the gifts of nature for everyday needs such as tools, fire, shelter, food.... in a conscientious and sustainable manner, as the ancients did.

The skills we have to offer include:

wild edible and medicinal plants (food to sustain and nourish us)
large animal processing (including honoring the animals by using all parts)
structure building
bow and arrow making
hunting and trapping methods
hide tanning
clothing and moccasin making
stone and bone tools
horse packing
basketry and containers

Our goal is to be able to live sustainably at a primitive (i.e., simple) level of technology year long.

We dream of a village of people sharing our lives in the arms of our generous and abundant Mother Earth. To reach this goal, we are constantly learning ancestral ways and teaching others who share similar aspirations in week-long intensive classes culminating in immersion projects lasting several months in which we live completely sustainably at a stone-age level of technology.

Right now we are leading month-long primitive-living experiments and we will keep on increasing the length of these experiences until we reach our ultimate goal.

We hope you will join us in this amazing adventure.

Top Ten Problems With Applying The Paleolithic Diet Principles: Number 7

Using flax seed oil liberally

In an attempt to replicate the putative fatty acid profile of Paleolithic diets, some people use flax seed oil as a source of omega-3 fatty acids.

One tablespoon (15 mL) of flax seed oil supplies 1.7 g of omega-6 linoleic acid (LA), and 7.2 g of omega-3 alpha-linolenic acid (ALA).

Research shows that both linoleic and linolenic acid have proinflammatory effects. Fang et al compared the effects of four 18-carbon fatty acids—oleic, linoleic, linolenic, and stearic acids-- on the expression of the proinflammatory genes cyclooxygenase (COX)-2 and inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) in human retinal pigment epithelium (RPE). Stearic acid is the primary saturated fatty acid found in beef fat, oleic is the monounsaturated fat that dominates olive oil and most nut oils, linoleic is the omega-6 polyunsaturated fat found in most seeds including flax, and linolenic is the omega-3 richly supplied by flax and hemp seeds.

Fang et al found that “oleic acid, linoleic acid (LA), or linolenic acid increased the expression of iNOS and COX-2 genes and the production of prostaglandin E(2 )and nitric oxide (NO) in RPE, whereas the saturated fatty acid stearic acid had little effect on these genes.”

According to the USDA, one tablespoon of beef tallow supplies 2.4 g of stearic acid, and only 0.4 g of linoleic acid, and only 0.08 g of linolenic acid. Hence, we can conclude that beef fat has very little inflammatory potential compared to flax oil, and that it is wiser to eat conventional beef fat than to add flax oil to your food—unless you relish the idea of losing your eyesight to macular degeneration.

Nelson et al performed an experiment to determine the effect of flax seed oil supplementation on inflammatory markers in “healthy” men and women who had abdominal obesity but had no chronic disease, took no medications, and did not exercise. The intervention involved increasing linolenic acid to 5% of total energy intake while decreasing other fat intake to keep caloric intake constant. Nelson et al measured interleukin-6, C-reactive protein, serum amyloid A, and tumor necrosis factor-alpha as markers of inflammation before and after the 8 week intervention.

What happened? Nothing. Nelson et al found found no significant changes in the inflammatory factors after eight weeks of flax oil supplementation.

In “Distribution, interconversion, and dose response of n–3 fatty acids in humans,” Arterburn et al report that non-adipose tissues contain only minute quantities of ALA and EPA. In most organs, DHA generally exceeds EPA 5- to 30-fold, and in the brain and retina, by several hundredfold. They further note that adipose tissue contains about one percent ALA but only very small amounts of DHA or EPA.

These facts imply that 1) we have no need for a continuous supply of ALA, 2) ALA readily contributes to adipose, and 3) we do need a contiuous supply of DHA and EPA (neither supplied by flax oil).

Arterburn et al also report that “ALA has the highest rate of oxidation among all unsaturated fatty acids,” about 22% in women and 33% in men. In addition, “Diets high in ALA appear to increase the rate of ALA oxidation, limiting its accumulation in plasma and reducing its conversion rate to EPA and DHA.” These facts imply that the body places a relatively low value on ALA as a structural lipid and that cells use ALA oxidation to limit the amount of ALA in tissues.

Arterburn et al also report that “The fractional conversion of ALA to EPA…varies between 0.3% and 8% in men, and the conversion of ALA to DHA is <4% and often undetectable in males” but it appears more efficient in women: up to 21% is converted to EPA and up to 9% is converted to DHA.

Also check out: Dietary modification of inflammation with lipids.

In sum, dietary ALA, from flax oil, does not contribute significantly to non-adipose tissue levels of n-3 fatty acids, and because we have limited ability to convert it to EPA or DHA, it does not contribute significantly to tissue levels of those n-3s, or to reduction of n-6 (arichidonic acid, ARA) levels in tissues. However, it may contribute to inflammation and to adipose tissue.

No hunter-gatherer tribe ate flax seed oil, but several ate fish or other marine oils. Hence, it seems wise for modern foragers to follow the same example: get your omega-3s from fish oil and limit or avoid flax oil.

But don’t overdo the fish oil either: Dietary supplementation with eicosapentaenoic acid can decrease natural killer cell activity.

Top Ten Problems With Applying The Paleolithic Diet Principles: Number 8

Eating quantities of raw nuts

Evolutionary selection favored trees that produced toxic nuts that would discourage predators from consuming the seed offspring of the tree. Although farmers have bred nut trees to reduce the bitterness of nuts, modern nuts still contain these toxins including enzyme inhibitors, bitter poisons, and lectins.

Traditional hunter-gatherers processed nuts by washing, soaking, and/or roasting to reduce or remove these inhibitors. In an essay on aboriginal subsistence in the Australian rain forest found in Food and Evolution (Temple University Press, 1987), David Harris quotes Archibald Meston, who in 1889 reported on the inland Australian Aborigines:

“The koa nut and other large nuts not yet botanically named, are the chief articles of diet. Some of the nuts and roots they eat are poisonous in their raw state, and these are pounded up and placed in dilly bags in running water for a couple of days to have the poisonous principle washed out.”

Harris goes on to quote a 1904 report of Aborigine food habits by Meston:

“They use three kinds of yam, and so far as I could learn they eat about twenty varieties of nuts…A majority of the nuts used are subjected to roasting and purification by running water. Some are merely roasted and eaten, and a few are eaten raw….”

For most hunters, most nuts presented an inefficient food source compared to meat and animal fat, due largely to the large amount of time required to extract nut meats from their wild shells. If you have no experience with wild nuts, take a look at this picture of a wild walnut shell. From this you can easily understand the difficulty involved in eating wild nuts: Thick shells with minimal meat. By breeding, farmers have created nuts with realtively thin shells and bigger meats, and we can purchase these already shelled. The breeding and shelling has made it possible to eat nuts in quantities without taking any steps to detoxify them.

In accord with Optimal Foraging Theory, if large game was available, hunters would pursue that rather than nuts because they could garner more food energy return per unit of energy spent hunting large game than they could gathering nuts.

The toxins and enzyme inhibitors naturally present in raw nuts can cause allergic (including anaphylactic) reactions, digestive distress, and skin disorders. On top of that, nuts have an unfavorable amount of omega-6 and ratio of omega-6 relative to omega-3.

For these reasons, I myself rarely eat raw nuts, with the exception of coconut flakes. To avoid ill effects of toxins in nuts, I recommend that modern foragers minimize or avoid raw nuts and, like the Aborigines, eat roasted nuts instead.

Relishing in the abundance of the forest: Arnica

I made it home from my month-long trip to California just in time to see the arnica blooming on the forest floor outside of my home. Today I was able to grab my gathering basket for a little stroll along the arnica paths to harvest some for liniment and oil. I also did a video for Herbmentor that should be up soon.

Arnica has many different species, and I don’t try to differentiate between them. It is a member of the Compositae family and when it goes to seed, it looks much like dandelion.

They have rhizomatic, roots which helps them to spread out in such dense patches. The leaves can be heart shaped, or sometimes are a thinner lance shape. The stems and leaves of this particular arnica are hairy, but I’ve read they can also be smooth. They can have 2-4 pairs of opposite leaves on the stem, with another pair of leaves at the base of the plant.

Arnica is hands down my choice for traumatic injuries such as bruising, sprains, strains, and even the trauma of broken bones. It is a magical plant that quickly clears blood stagnation, reduces swelling, and thereby decreases pain and increases healing time. It does this by dilating blood capillaries to increase blood flow to and from injuries.

It’s also great for achy muscles that have been overworked, or are chronically sore. Again, because it opens up circulation to an area and reduces inflammation it can also be used for arthritis (especially osteoarthritis) and bursitis.

Because arnica is a topical irritant, it works best on closed wounds, so if I have an injury with bruising and a cut or scrape I reach for something else. I’ve never had this happen to myself, but some people have reported a rash with extended use.

Most herbalists agree that arnica could be used internally, but only with A LOT of caution. Side effects include cardiac arrest and internal bleeding. Michael Moore, in his book, Medicine Plants of the Pacific West, has interesting notes about using it for sore throats, and other internal uses. Of course it is often used internally in homeopathic doses.

Arnica is ready to harvest when it is in full bloom, and looking vibrant. To harvest arnica I use a pair of scissors to clip the stem a couple of inches above the forest floor leaving a pair of leaves intact. I like harvesting arnica without gloves smelling the rich scent of arnica on my hands. It's smell is not unlike the sap of the pine trees which is where it likes to grow.

Arnica rhizomes help to aerate the soil, so I walk along the edge of arnica patches clipping a plant here and there to add to my basket. Also, because they can help reduce soil erosion I harvest arnica on flat surfaces, rather than hillsides.

Today I’ll be making both a liniment and oil. The liniment (an alcohol extraction) I made shortly after harvesting, but I let the arnica wilt a bit longer before infusing them in oil.

Arnica can easily be spoiled in oil, so I really baby this one by stirring every day, leaving a cloth lid on for about a week, and being extra sure there is no plant material above the surface of the oil. (Good tips for whenever you are making infused oils from fresh material.)

I often combine arnica with other plants in my salves, but I also like it as a simple with some lavender essential oil.

Further reading:

Medicine Plants of the Pacific West, Michael Moore
From Earth to Herbalist, Gregory Tilford