Foraged: Mullein

Verbascum Thapsis is quite possibly the best plant, ever. It is incredibly soft and fuzzy and is a pleasure to touch. First-year plants form a rosette of large, velvety leaves that are up to 1 foot long and in the second year a velvety flower spike grows as much as 8 feet tall. (You can differentiate this plant from Lamb's Ear by the fact that it grows in a rosette and Lamb's Ear just grows in clumps.)

In the 19th century Mullein had dozens of (awesome) names: "Hare's Beard", "Jupitor's Staff", "Feltwort", "Ice Leaf", "Beggar's Blanket"... to name a few. “Candlewick plant” refers to the practice of using dried mullein leaves and stems to make lamp wicks (the use of Mullein as torches dates back to Roman times, if not even earlier). There is also the intriguing name “Hag Taper.” In the midwestern United States, Mullein is more pithily known as "Cowboy Toilet Paper".

Mullein is a plant with a long and varied history of use (Pliny the Elder describes it in Naturalis Historia) and it is still often available in health and herbal stores. Both the leaves and flowers contain mucilage, which is soothing to irritated membranes, and saponins, which make coughs more productive. “Quaker rouge” refers to the practice of reddening cheeks by rubbing them with a mullein leaf, and a yellow dye extracted from the flowers has been used since Roman times as a hair rinse as well as to dye cloth. (I totally tried the whole Quaker rouge thing before I even learned that phrase just because they looked so cozy... a little scratchy, but also kind of pleasant. You just can't help it. This plant's leaves are like a snuggly blanket.)

Foraged: Club Moss

Club moss (Lycopodiopsida) is very structurally similar to the earliest forms of plant life (primitive vascular plants); when I look at it, I like to pretend I'm roaming the same woods as the dinosaurs, only picture GIANT club mosses that grew hundreds of feet tall. Modern-day club moss hugs the ground but can produce a stem up to four feet tall. Despite its name, it is not an actual moss. Wikipedia alleges that "a powder known simply as lycopodium, consisting of dried spores of the common clubmoss, was used in Victorian theater to produce flame-effects. A blown cloud of spores burned rapidly and brightly, but with little heat. It was considered safe by the standards of the time." The spore also formed the basis of the flash powder in the earliest days of photography. Club moss spores were once used as a baby powder and even as an absorbent dusting powder in the early days of surgery... and it has a whole host of homeopathic uses that stem back hundreds of years. It also known as Clubfoot Moss, Common Club Moss,  Foxtail, Ground Pine, Lycopodium, Running Club Moss, Staghorn, Vegetable Sulphur and Wolf's Claw. I'm loving the name Wolf's Claw - picturing Club moss as its claws makes me think of a really creepy long and jagged-clawed mossy green monster.

Foraged: Goldthread

My co-caretaker harvested some Coptis groenlandica from our backyard to make a tincture (I made the bottle's label). Goldthread is also known as Canker root. These golden roots belong to an evergreen plant in the buttercup family, and can be harvested even in the winter under a blanket of snow. Native Americans chewed this root for medicinal purposes and also made tea. An effective treatment, it became a popular indigenous drug with the colonists as well. Goldthread traditionally is used to treat mouth sores and thrush but is also used with digestive problems. It is sometimes used in combination with or substituted for goldenseal. Both have berberine, a bitter alkaloid with strong antibacterial qualities. The easiest way to make a tincture is to use 100 proof vodka, cover the roots completely, seal for 6 weeks and then strain.

Foraged: Partridge Berry

Partridge berry (Mitchella repens) is also known as squaw berry, two-eyed berry, twin berry, and  running fox. It is a woodland plant found throughout eastern North America. This is an easily identifiable plant due the fact that it creates two flowers for every berry; the ovaries of the flowers fuse, creating two spots on each berry. Guidebooks seem to be fond of describing its habit of laying "prostrate on the forest floor". File this one under edible but not ideal; you can eat the berries, but they are mealy and bland. Apparently you can make jam with the berries as well as tea from the leaves and berries. (Having tasted the berries, I would not vouch for the jam.) Supposedly Native Americans used the plant during the final weeks of pregnancy to ease childbirth and English colonists made a tea that was used as an aid in childbirth and to relieve menstrual cramps. Partridge, grouse, turkeys and other game birds eat the berries, as do skunks, white-footed mice and foxes. (You can file this under "useless information I will never need" if you want... but I like knowing this stuff. And maybe some day I'll make that jam just for the hell of it, even though I know it will probably taste awful.) It is an evergreen plant that is a non-climbing vine and can be propagated via cuttings and best of all... I hear it does great in terrariums. (I kind of let this poor little guy wilt a little... he spent the night tucked away in my sketchbook.)