Show 238: Wild Strawberry, Winter Cress, Galax and Wintergreen

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, y'all, welcome to this week's show. Today, we're going
to get into a couple of really interesting plants. We'll
do at least, well, probably two edible plants from my
spring Forge and cookbook, and then probably get into two
from the Medicinal Shrubs book. You know. Yeah, they're all

(00:21):
pretty interesting. One of them is really one of my favorites. Well,
you're gonna really get into it. It's a gultheria or
winter green. You're gonna love that as a medicinal herb uh.
But actually the edibles are certainly two of my favorites.
I mean wild strawberry. Who doesn't like strawberries, right, I
mean strawberries are delicious. Now, a few months ago, I

(00:44):
was talking with a friend of mine. She's a baker
in California, a master baker. I mean, she's trained in baking,
culinary art. She could be a chef if she went
to she could be a baker, she could do she's
an herbalist, she could do anything. Once a very talented individual,
very intelligent and very very very independent. When I first

(01:09):
started talking with her and we became friends years ago,
she was living in a tent in a national forest.
You know she I guess had an argument with a
roommate or something. She had her two dogs and just
went and lived in a tent. There are not many
young ladies in their twenties that are just going to
go live in a tent in the woods for a

(01:29):
few months are there. But she's pretty special and she's
a good friend of mine. We were talking about I
guess it's probably about this time last year strawberries, as
she said, in California, the strawberries were horrible, which surprised me.
I mean, we get so much produce out of California.
She said, they just have no flavor. They're like insipid.

(01:51):
They're just not good. And she said even at the bakery.
And she worked at one of the top bakeries, and
I remember talking real high end bakery. She's known for
croissants especially. She worked with one of the top bakeries
at a ski resort town in California. And I mean,
she said, they just will not use the strawberries that

(02:11):
the local farmers are producing because they're not good. You know,
I have encountered that a few times. Where I grew
up about half my childhood in North Carolina, down in
the Eastern Proto State. You know, I was born in
the mountains. After my parents' divorce, lived in the eastern
parta state for you know, ten years or so, they

(02:32):
moved back up in the mountains, really known for strawberry
growing and a good, good, really good climate for strawberry growing.
My great grandfather grew some phenomenal strawberries, but the fields
around there, it's kind of hit or miss. Sometimes you'll
get a good strawberry, and sometimes it's like, man, it's

(02:52):
kind of hard and woody, or it's watery and it
just doesn't have a flavor. And yeah, that can have
to do a lot with weather conditions, but more than anything, well,
variety of course as well. You have your strawberries that
are normally grown commercially, which only bear berries in say
April and May once a year, or you have the

(03:14):
ever bearing perennial variety that are closer to the wild
strawberries generally much better in flavor but smaller, and the
market wants big, juicy strawberries. Well, over the past I
guess thirty years or so, at least since NAFTA in
the nineties, the strawberry growers have been growing strawberries really

(03:36):
with a focus not so much on flavor but on
storage capability. They want a big, firm strawberry that's going
to last a week or two in the grocery store,
and if it tastes like cardboard, so be it. They
don't really care. They get more money for big, pretty

(03:58):
red strawberry set last than they do for small, delicious, tasty,
wonderful fruit, and so a lot of them just really
don't care if their product tastes like cardboard. Some of
them would argue with me, and I've had those conversations before.
They say, this is what we have to do to

(04:19):
market our strawberries. I'm like, but why the hell would
anybody buy them if they don't taste good. Well, people
buy them because they look good, and I'm like, well
I won't, you know. You know, those are the conversations
we often have, and I understand they have to do
what they have to do to make their a living,
so I don't follow them for it. But there are
a lot of strawberry fields that were so wonderful when

(04:40):
I was a child that we go back to every
year and pick buckets full of strawberries that I will
never go to again. I think I can think of
one in particular. Not only were the strawberries kind of
hard and woody, they had no flavor, but they were
treated with a pesticide or something that made me sick

(05:02):
when I ate them, and made my mother sick too.
I stopped and said, let me grab a bucket of strawberries.
You know you enjoy them. I thought she would. I
went out there. I spent far more money than I
should have for a bucket of strawberries that I picked myself.
I mean, come on, you know you should charge less
for picket yourself than if you actually have to pay
somebody to pick them for you and then sell them

(05:23):
to the customer. But no, I paid a lot more
money than I should have. And I asked for these washed,
and they said, yeah, they're washed, they're ready to go.
You can eat them right now. Okay, great, got in
the car. I ate two or three. She ate two
or three or both. Like Dad, these aren't very good.
An hour later we were very, very sick, essentially poisoned
by the pesticides or whatever they had put on. There

(05:45):
could have been a chemical fertilizer. I have no idea
so these days, if I'm going to have strawberries. I
generally like to grow on myself, and I like to
grow airloom strawberries ever bearing strawberries, which means a plant's
going to produce two or three berries a week. It's

(06:06):
not either this big flush, right, So you've got to
have several plants and you're gonna get a few berries
off each one. But it's gonna be throughout the season
spring through fall really, I mean even into the fall,
sort of not late fall, but early fall. And they're delicious.
They're small. When I say small, what would they be
the size of a quarter and maybe a nickel, so

(06:29):
between around a nickel, let's say a nickel in size
as opposed to that big grocery store strawberry. But they
have more flavor than five of those grocer store strawberries
put together. They're delicious. So last year the hurricane came
through Helene and wiped out my strawberry bits, literally all
the top. So everything's gone, okay. I mean, you know,

(06:52):
I grow stuff. I garden, I plant herbs and plant vegetables.
I plant all kinds of stuff. The water down from
the mountain in the sky at one time so hard
it literally washed everything away, raised beds, stone bordered beds,

(07:12):
top soil, perennial plants ended up, you know, across the
street and in the river somewhere. I mean just gone.
So I've got to start for scratch totally this year.
And it's you know, I should have been started before now,
but I've got, you know, so much work to do
in the house. I just don't have time to do

(07:33):
a lot of gardening this year. I'm not exactly sure
what I'm going to do. You know, I need to
have a garden this year. That's a big part of
my lifestyle. It's something I will really look forward to.
It's a big part of my diet. I don't like
a lot of the produce in the grocery stores. But
I mean, you know, thirty years of gardening in one

(07:54):
spot was washed away in you know, three hours. I
mean the river went from eight inches to thirty feet
in three hours of rain. It was just ridiculous. I'm
still cutting up trees, I'm still digging out Essentially, I've
got to replace every bit of insulation in my house.
I've got to replumb the entire house. I have to

(08:16):
rewire part of the house. I have to replace walls, subflooring.
I mean, I'm seriously, I'm cutting out the bases of walls.
I'm cutting out floors. I've got to replace the sub flooring.
I gotta put in or scab or sister of the joists.
I've got a shim up flooring. I've got to put
in new ceilings, some roof work. The chimney has to

(08:40):
be resealed. I mean, by the time I catch up,
just to say I'm caught up enough to think about
planting a potato, it's gonna be fall. So this year,
I'm really looking at wild strawberries. And I love wild strawberries.
I love them since I was a child. I've been

(09:01):
eaten wild strawberries since I was probably two years old,
if not younger. They're delicious. And you know I told
you about how like the ever bearing heirloom strawberries, like
your alpine strawberries and such, are so much smaller. They're
like says of a nickel. A wild strawberry is usually
about the size of a pea. But they have so
much flavor. And you can go out and if you're

(09:23):
persistent and you find a good patch at the right time,
you can gather wild strawberries they're absolutely delicious. They have
more flavor in that one little strawberry maybe size of
a grape or a pea somewhere in between the two.
There's going to be more flavor in there than a
pound of strawberries from the grocery store. And you know, honestly,

(09:46):
I hate to say it because I know how much
the people I mean in my home state and all
around they're strawberry growers in Virginia and Tennessee and Georgia,
I mean everywhere I've lived. They depend on that revenue.
But if they keep making, if they keep growing strawberries
and I want to say making, I mean breeding varieties

(10:09):
that are just for shelf life and have no flavor,
I really hope people stop buying them. I mean, that's
the only way you're going to get them to grow
good strawberries again, is if you don't buy the garbage
that just looks good. And yeah, they're pretty, they're bred
for looks. They're real pretty. They have no flavor at all.
A lot of those sometimes you get candied or in

(10:30):
a box or something. They may have actually been injected
with something that gives them a little extra little citric
acid and sugar I'm not saying they have. They may have.
I've been told that some are chemically treated before they
are put on store shelves. They are artificially ripened. They

(10:55):
will put them in an environment with a certain gas
that cause them to turn red. It doesn't make the
sugars come out, It just turns them red and bright. Yeah,
it's not good. So anyway, wild strawberries and blueberries and
blackberries are gonna be my fruit this year unless something

(11:16):
really dramatic changes. I don't necessarily need like to win
the lottery or something. I need actually a bunch of
handymen and builders in the area to not have ten
thousand jobs essentially ahead of me. I mean, everybody in
the region has damage, and everybody needs help, and everybody's

(11:37):
book solid. So you know, I gotta do so much
of it myself that I don't see a garden happening
this year. There is a really outside chance. Really, this
is like so outside. I mean, I'm thinking about it
and praying about it. There's a little bit of land
in South Carolina where maybe I could spend the winter

(11:58):
and basically just camp out on the land and have
a fall garden fall winter garden. I wouldn't mind that
in the least. I'd love to have some good collared
grains and turnips and mustard and everything I love like that,
and be there for the shad run in January. When
the shads start running upstream from the ocean. It's a
form of herring and they're just delicious. And of course

(12:20):
you'd have oysters and crabs and all that through the winter.
It would really be worth it. I don't know if
I can really afford it, don't know if it's going
to work out. Don't know if I even have time
to go down and view the property with everything I've
got to go and tell you the truth. But yeah,
so unfortunately, probably no garden this year, which is really

(12:43):
an odd thing to say for me. Really, I mean,
I grew up on a farm. I'm not a person
that says, well, I'm not gonna have a garden this year. No.
I you know, I don't like buying produce from the store.
The reason I don't like buying pro to the stores,
it's not good. Nine times out of ten, it's just
not good. But anyway, so we talked about wild strawberries.

(13:08):
They are small, as I said, the only real lookalikes
the false wild strawberry also not poisonous. It just didn't
heavy flavor. It looks sort of like a strawberry. It's
a little RedBerry. The texture of it's different, The flavor
is totally different. If you taste one against the other,

(13:29):
you're going to know which one's a strawberry. But you know, recently,
I was, well, this has been years ago. Recently, it's
probably five years ago. I was on Facebook and someone
posted just a frantic post, my grandchild just ate what
looks to be a wild strawberry? Do I need to
take her to the hospital? And I'd respond to her no,

(13:50):
If it looks like a strawberry, If it smells like
a strawberry and tastes like a strawberry, it's a strawberry.
That's where we get strawberries from. We bred them from
wild strawberries. And here's a picture, and say, oh, that's great.
You know, I'm so afraid of her eating wild food.
And I'm like, okay, you know, it's like I say,

(14:12):
if it looks like an onion, smells like an onion,
it's an onion. If it looks like a grape and
tastes like a grape and smells like a grape, it's
a grape. If it looks like a strawberry and smells
like a strawberry and tastes like a strawberry, it's a strawberry.
There are some poisonous red berries, don't get me wrong,
but you want to look at the leaf, look at
the flower, and look at the berry, and frankly, I

(14:34):
think a five year old could probably identify a wild
strawberry without any reference. I know I could. I man
certainly did. I ate tons of them when I was
a toddler. I'd crawl along and probably before I could walk,
I just crawl along and eat wild strawberries. I mean,
you know, I don't get it. I don't get people.
So anyway, you can absolutely enjoy strawberries fresh, just eating

(14:57):
out of hand. You know everybody does that. You can
cook them, especially wild ones are probably a little bear
cooked with some sugar and lemon juice, make some preserves
or jam, and that's so good. I mean a hot
buttered biscuit, I mean a real biscuit made with butter
and lard and buttermilk. I mean, yeah, you can flavor that.
If you want to have a more complex flavor. You

(15:19):
can flavor your strawberry jam or syrup or whatever you're
doing with some mint or basil or you know, even
black pepper. Oddly enough, that's really traditional. Going back to
ancient run, combining strawberries with black pepper was very common
and honey. I mean there was like three things going
would go together a lot. It doesn't have to be strawberries,

(15:40):
but other fruit or berries. They often put black pepper
in a little bit of salt on. You know. It
takes a little getting used to, but the pepper does
actually enhance the flavor. Salt certainly does. Violet blossoms are
good with strawberries. You know, I've never found enough wild strawberries.
It ONTs to make wine if you did. Strawberry wine

(16:03):
is just fantastic, super easy to make. Crush your berries
I would use. If I had a gallon of strawberries,
I'd crush them down as best I could. Don't worry
about straining everything out. I mean a lot of it's
gonna break down during the fermentation process, but mash them
up real well. And combined with that, about a gallon

(16:23):
of water and I'm see two pounds of sugar that
may be too much between a pound and two pounds
of sugar and a little lemon, and then as you
yeast and just let it ferment, it's going to make
a nice wine. You could do it with just strawberry
juice alone, if that's all you if you didn't, if

(16:44):
you had enough. I mean, I'm not saying if that's
all you had, is if you have enough. The leaves
of wild strawberry or cultivated strawberry are edible as well.
It's in the rose family and the geranium family and
all that. And they're tender where they've just come out.
You can absolutely put them a salad. They're tasty, little tangy.

(17:06):
They're stringent, though, so you don't want eat too much.
It could kind of dry up, plug up, actually, But
for that reason there leaves of wild strawberry are very
good for diarrhea, sore throat and all that. So I
had last another one I want to do. The last
of the wild edibles for the day is winter cress. Now,
this this is an interesting one. When I was a kid,

(17:30):
you know, my parents had a grocery store. It'd been
the family for a few generations, and it was in
a resort town in the mountains of North Carolina where
we had lots of European folks that came in for
the summer. They would summer here and then go back
to wherever they came from in Europe, Austria, France, Switzerland,

(17:52):
there were tons of Swiss, actually Germans, tons of Germans, English,
you name it. We got them from all over, mostly
very wealthy people, and they had private chefs, they had chauffeurs.
I mean, it was, you know, kind of different. I mean,
we actually stocked wine cellars for some of the wealthiest

(18:13):
people in the entire world. And I'm not kidding. I
could name names, but I mean it was no big
deal at all in this is nineteen seventies, nineteen eighties
for one of these people to come up in a
chauffeur driven Bentley Rolls Royce and maybe they'd walk inside.

(18:34):
They'd usually send their you know, hired help in and
order you know, fifty cases of dom Perignon I mean,
and Lafitte, Rothschild, Chateau Lafitte, or I mean expensive wines
that you I mean, I can't even imagine buying. They'd
buy it by not just the case, but like almost

(18:56):
a truckload, and they fill their wine cellars, imported cheeses. Yeah,
I mean it was real high end stuff. One of
the more interesting things they bought, which I mean I
remember even as a kid being aware of, was called
creasy greens. Now these were sold in cans. It was

(19:16):
a can and inside it had greens, which to me
as a kid were kind of like turnips or mustard.
You know, I mean, I thought, well, this is cool. Well,
the local mountain folk, who were the polar opposite of
those rich people that also shop with us, we had
a little tavern and such. They buy the groceries to
come in. They sit down and have a beer and

(19:37):
a sandwich, maybe shoot a little pool, just salt of
the earth. Hard working, a lot of more carpenters. They
couldn't work in the winter, so they spent all day
at the tavern, drinking beer and smoking cigarettes. And you know,
not people with a lot of money, people with you know,
rusted out old trucks. They were also crazy about creasy grains.

(19:58):
They would buy them in the can, just like the
rich people did or and they really look forward to it.
Each year they go out and harvest them themselves. And
what that was was winter cress. Now of course they
would also eat poke salad and dandelion greens and all that.
But winter crest was called crease or creasy, and I
don't think you can find in the story anymore, but

(20:19):
you can absolutely harvest it. It's a lot like wild
mustard in texture and flavor. And if it wasn't for
the shape of the leaves, you really couldn't tell the part.
They taste the same, they smell the same. I mean,
the flowers are also similar in appearance. The two plants
proud of at the same time and all honestly, I
just gather them together and I don't care what's winter

(20:39):
crest and what's a mustard. I just pull it up,
dausted in the basket of her bag and you know,
I'm good, or cut it off the top, you know,
it depends. They go into the same bag, and I
cook them together. I mean, I don't even sort them out.
Let's they get home. You're a little sharp and a
little tough to be eaten raw, but cooked in a can.

(21:01):
You know, if you think like canned spinach, they were
kind of like boiled down like that. It's better if
you cook them in just an open pot, because like
all members of the Brasica family, they have certain chemical compounds.
I think it's cyanide gases. I think that's right, that

(21:22):
are actually in the cells of the plant. They don't
hurt you or anything, but when you cut them, they're released.
And that's why when you cut you know, brassicas, mustard, collars, kale,
they smell, but when you cook, and they smell really strong. Right,
you want to always cook your brassica is in an
uncovered pot that even includes broccoli and such cauliflower. I

(21:43):
mean you name it cabbage. Certainly, Yeah, it's going to stink,
but it doesn't stinky less if you put a lid
on it. What it does is if you put the
lid on it, those gases begin to escape. They gas off,
but they will go up and hit the condensation the
steam against the lid, and then they actually turn into

(22:03):
the toxic form of cyanide. I believe that's right. I
don't think it's arstick. I think it's cyanide. And it
drips back down to the vegetables. That would then turn
your vegetables, your greens from a nice bright emerald green
to a dull, drab, olive brown gray. And it destroys
the flavor, it destroys the texture, It makes them sneak

(22:25):
worse actually, and it takes away a lot of your nutrition.
So with any greens, cook them with the lid off.
Never put your lid on the greens. Now, you can
boiler these if you want. That's totally your right and privilege. Whatever.
If you go into harvest or you get some any
kind of brasacs, you can boil them if you do.

(22:48):
I think boiling them in is some chicken broth or
something is better than just plain water. What we do
in my family, what I prefer is to take my greens,
whether these are mustard or collars, or kale or turn
up for you name it right, take your greens, wash them,
leave the water on there, just kind of shake them
off a bit so they're not dripping on the floor.
I mean, leave as much on there as you can.

(23:10):
Really chop them, chop them large, a big ribbons, big strips,
and put them in a hot pan in which you
put a little bit of lard. If you don't have lard,
you can certainly use oil. It's not going to hurt anything.
Large nice bacon drippings are perfect. Actually, that's really the
best put them in there and then add some salt,

(23:32):
and within just a few minutes they'll start to cook
down and you'll need to store them with a spoon.
About ten minutes they're done. They're not overcooked. They have
a nice, good green color. The smell will gas off
very quickly. The become very savory. Aroom are very tasty.

(23:54):
They'll be sweet, and that's really the difference. When you
cook them with the lid on and the cyanide comes
back onto there, it makes them bitter. And that's why
people add sugar and such to their collar grains, because
they're trying to counter the bitterness. Actually, if you cook
them the right way, you never need to put sugar
on your grains. I just cook them down to the

(24:14):
tender enough to eat. Take one out, chew it is
it tender? If not give them another minute, you know,
no big deal. I don't even cut the ribs out
of stuff, you know, just cook it until it's tender enough,
and I like a little chew, and then serve them
with hot pepper vinegar. And that's nothing more than apple
cide or vinegar in which you've pickled a few hot peppers.
Julapenios tabasco, whatever you want to put in there. Cayenne

(24:35):
is really probably makes about the best green cayenne peppers
before they've been dried, really really good, really really good.
One of the best ways to use winter crests because
you're probably not going to get as much of it
as if you had a big old hit of collars
or something, is to include a soup. It makes it.

(24:58):
You know, if again not have a side dish it
I mean, you know, absolutely, but as a soup's really good.
In Asian grocery stores you'll see pickled mustard greens and
be very good. I don't often get to an Asian
grocery store, but pickled winter crusts done the same way

(25:19):
that whether it's a fermaded pickle or a vinegar pickle,
very good. Nice little side dish for a heavy meal.
It just eight eights with digestion. It cleanses the palates.
Very actually very good. You can use the greens raw
or pickled in soups. When you add it to a soup,
you're adding that little kind of vinegary taste to it.

(25:41):
So I think like a Chinese hot and sour soup
or like a German sour Broughton. You know where you've
got basically a sweet and sour sauce that goes with
some roast pork. Excellent way to do it. The traditional
German sour Broughton usually uses vinegar and crushed ginger snap cookies.

(26:01):
I know it sounds weird, it tastes great. I'm not
a big fan of sweets and food, but I make
two exceptions, well three, I make three exceptions, okay. And
the third, the one that just came to my mind
is the Chicago style hot dog. That's the one hot
dog I'll eat that has relish on it. And it's
a sweet relish somehow, it just works with the celery

(26:24):
salt and the deal pickle and the pickled tomato. And
I mean, in all honestly, I'd probably rather have it
without the relish, but you know, I never think to
order it without the red relish. And you get that
weird neon blue relish on there and you buy it
into it, It's like, yeah, that's the Chicago style hot dog,
and that's really good. I Mean, my favorite hot dog

(26:47):
is just soauur kraut and mustard, maybe a little hot sauce,
but Chicago style is I mean, if it's a good one,
maybe the best hot dog in America. I mean, you know,
coming from North Carolina, we got our hot dogs with
chili and slaw and onions and mustard, and I mean
I could show those things down my throat about as
fast as any make conserve them to me. But that

(27:07):
Chicago saw red hot is actually really good. I mean,
it actually is really good. But anyway, the other would
just sorts be Tarioki. I do not I'm not a
huge fan, but every now and then some Tarioki pork
and I certainly don't mind if there's some pineapple with it.
I mean that's just traditional. But the sour broaden, which

(27:30):
is usually a pork roast served with cooked with vinegar
and crumbled ginger snaps, surprisingly good. I mean it actually
it's surprisingly good. It's not something I would go for
every day, but you know, every now and then it's
very actually very good. So I mean, so if you

(27:52):
like that, you could definitely use the pickled winter cress
along with the crumbled ginger snaps or instead of cookies.
What I would do, I would cover the meat either
with the pickled winter cress or mustard or sour kraut,
of course I make my own kraut, but really any
kind but really any kind of pickled vegetables, So whether

(28:16):
you had kraut or just any kind of sour pickled
vegetables and then use some spices, I mean, and that's
really more traditional to the recipe. The us of ginger
snaps has only come about in the last one hundred years.
Going back two three five hundred, one thousand years ago,
we made the exact same dish using saur kraut, using

(28:37):
vinegar or whatever they had, and spices because the spice
trade was really big in the Middle Ages, and so
they'd have cinnamon and ginger and clothes corion or mustard seed,
had a handful of raisins, dried grapes, glass of a
low acid wine or a beer. That's really the origins

(28:58):
of the recipe. And if I'm gonna make it, that's
more the way I like it. A few raisins don't
add a lot of sweetness to the dish. The spices,
the cinnamon, ginger, clove, you know, it's more they're considered
sweet spices, but you don't actually have any sugar to them.
They just are We associate them with cookies, you know,

(29:19):
and then you know, some mustard seed and coriand or
give it that good back ground flavor, same kind of
thing you'd put in a corn beef or something like that,
and the wine and beer just bring everything together and
it's really good. Actually, it really is good. If I'm
gonna make a sour broaden, that's sort of the way
I do it, and I mean, serru webs with some
potato salad and you are set. I mean, that is

(29:43):
truly phenomenal. And of course if you want to put
some sweet pickle else in your potato salad, that's very traditional.
Not gonna look down on you for that. But yeah,
I mean no, seriously, sometimes you get a sour brot
and it's just way too or it's too sweet and
too sour. You know, if you do it the way

(30:04):
I just said, using raisins is the only sweetener, and
using the spices as opposed to the spice cookies, it's
gonna blow your mind. I mean it really will. That
is that's a reason to buy a port. But I
mean it's just really dark and good. Actually. So now
let's get onto our medicinals for the week. And the

(30:26):
first well, I just got a note. This isn't a
medicinal plant all. Actually, well that's not true. It does
have some limited medicinal use. One of the most common
plants you're gonna find in the Appleatcha Mountains in North
Carolina is gaylax. You will find this well into Virginia.
There's a whole town up there called Gaylax Virginia. You'll
find it anywhere in the Appalatch of Mountains actually, probably

(30:49):
from ol Alabama and Georgia up to New York and
gaylax is just a low growing green, evergreen plant. Nice,
you know, large leaves, well not large, you know, maybe
three inches across. They're mostly gathered and sold to forests
for flower arrangements. That's actually been one of the traditional

(31:11):
ways that mountain people have made money, just gathering huge
bundles full of gaylags basketsful, and sewing them for forests.
They're not much used medicinally, however. Plants for a Future
tells us that this plant is used for healing all
kinds of wounds and cuts, and infusion of the roofs

(31:33):
root is used to treat kidney problems. Okay, that's actually
news to me. I grew up in the mountains. I
grew up being taught by herbalists. Professional herbalists who gathered
herbs to sell to the Wilcox Company, who then sold
them on to every vitamin and an herb company. You

(31:53):
can imagine. They made their living harvesting herbs. They also
used herbs and herbal they said gaylax didn't have any
use herbally. They would gather baskets full of it and
sell it for forrest. That was part of the way
they make their money. They would also cut wood and
you know, do different things trap when fur prices were up,

(32:15):
and you know, you name it right. So I never
knew you could use gaylax. I literally have tons of
gaylax all around my house. On any given day, In
five minutes, I could fill my truck bed full of it.
So we're going to give this a shot this year.
Well hopefully maybe not. I mean hopefully I don't get
any wounds and cuts or have any kidney problems. But

(32:37):
I am going to keep this in mind, and if
I get cut, if I have a wound or something,
my kidney's knock on wood, God willing. They've always been fine.
Hopefully they always will be fine. You know, we'll give
this a try. So gaylax. You know interesting, that's what's
the Latin name gay g a lax gaylax orcuilta. This

(33:03):
is not the way you pronounce that. You are c
eo l a t a more of a mountain plant.
If you're a lower elevation, you may never see it,
but you'll see it in flower arrangements. And unless they've
treated it with something, if it's just dried out, it
could potentially still be medicinal. I don't know. You'll have
to look into that. Ask your florest if it's been

(33:25):
sprayed with something. Right. So, Now, one that is much
more widespread is gulf area. It is winter green. There
are thirty seven varieties of gaulth area that have documented
use in herbal medicine. Grows on various continents. There are
a lot of varieties of it. Only one native to
my region, and it's Gotheria procumbens, one of the most

(33:48):
common in America. It's called winter green or tea bery.
Super popular up until very recent times as an ingredient
in gom and candy. I mean, you're teaberry gum. Winter
grain was really really popular through the eighteen hundreds, but
then they found they could get winter green extract from

(34:10):
birch twigs, and so at that point I would say
that the Gutheria winter green was probably over harvested, so
it's a good thing they did. After that, they started
using that winter green extract from the birch twigs for
making liniments, for making candy, for making root beer, and

(34:30):
it's good. It's really good. I would actually say in
many cases it's superior to true winter green because it
also has salacin. It has that aspirin like component to it.
Winter grain proper was used by the Lumby as a
tea to treat chronic indigestion. Also, the leaves were to

(34:51):
used for chewed for dysenterian tender gums. Tea was made
from the leaves for colds, and the Algonquin people use
win in an imfusion to treat colds and headache and
various types of discomfort. It's got that sallisan compound. It's
more pronounced than the birch tweets, so so the birch
has more of the salason. But you know, winter green

(35:14):
actually does have some towards an American material. America one
of my favorite books This was the first herbal really
written in the United States. It was written by the settlers,
and that's why it's called towards an American Material, a medica.
They were using to learn, they were learning to use

(35:34):
the native plants from the Native Americans. And let's you know,
that's a contradiction terms. There's no such thing as a
Native American. It's just the Native Americans are Indians or
whatever you want to say, got here a thousand years
before the white people, did, you know, maybe a few
thousand years in some cases, but there was a time

(35:56):
when North America was not populated at all. It was
South America. And so everybody's an immigrant in the United States.
You know, people like to say, well, you know, this
land belongs to the Indians, and you know they were
invaded by the white people, and it's like, well, okay,
but they just got here a couple of centuries before
the Spanish. What gives them more of a right than

(36:19):
okay whatever? You know, Just you know, lay the politics down.
It's all stupid when you get down to it. But
Towards an American Material Medica says the Gulf Areya procumbence,
which we call Mountain tea. It's spread very extensively over
the more barren mountainous parts of the United States. It

(36:39):
belongs to the same class as the plants mentioned also
in a winter grain, by the way, and we've talked
about those as well, chimphile and such. I have made
a strong infusion of this plant, which is evidently possessed
of a stimulant and anidyne quality. I am told it
has been found useful in as medicine and cases of asthma,
but I have not learned to what particular form this

(37:02):
disease is best adapted, nor in what manner it operates.
Skipping ahead ago one hundred and fifty years, we get
two resources of the Southern fields and forests, where he
talks about the same plant under different names spicy winter green,
partridge bery, mountain berry. The botanists who was French working
for the Confederacy found it growing in the mountains of

(37:24):
the Carolina, South Carolina and North Carolina. And it does
I don't call it common, but it's not uncommon, he says.
The whole plant is aromatic. It possesses stimulant aromatic properties
united with its fringency. Henstage is used with advantage in
some forms of chronic dysentery. It is said to have

(37:45):
some anodyne power. The infusion of the leaves has been
found beneficial in a minarea attended with debility, and in
promoting the mammary secretion when deficient. In the Revolutionary War,
it was used as a substitute for tea. The berries,
which are aromatic can pleasant, are employed to flavor spirituous liquors.
An infusion of them in brandy is a convenient and

(38:07):
useful substitute for the ordinary bitters. And essential oil is
obtained from the leaves by distillation. From mister Procker's examination
that was in the American Pharmaceutical Journal, it is shown
to possess acrid acid properties and to have the same
composition as the salicylate of methylene. In word, it has
some salacin, has some aspirin. It is one of the

(38:29):
heaviest of the essential oils, having a specific gravity of
one point one three, with a burning aromatic taste. Mixing
with alcohol or ether in all proportions see oh good
for to diminish the sensitivity of nerves affected by curious
teeth that means sore teeth from cavities essentially toothache that

(38:52):
can numb them out and to disguise the taste and
smell of knowledgeous medicines. Going forward a good fifty years
where up to King's American Dispensatory eighteen ninety eight, they
talked about it being native to the southern United States,
from Florida to Maine, well from the south through the north,
actually so from Florida to Maine and westward from Pennsylvania Kentucky.

(39:12):
And this is true. It grows in cool damp wood,
sandy soils, and on mountains. Let's see if we get
some medicinal Well, first of all, it says the leaves
contain an odors follow to oil, which may be attained
the same manner as oil. Peppermint and winter green and
peppermint are very similar. Actually, it is the chemical constituents,

(39:36):
all right, actions of medicinal uses and dosages. Wintergreen possesses stimuli, aromatic,
and astringent properties. It is used in effusion as in
and infusion as an astringent, in chronic mucus discharges as
a diuretic, and dysuria as an amnagogue. In stimulation and
case stability. That means it brings on min seas in

(39:56):
other words, and it's said to augment the flow of
the lack. It also helps increase mother's milk. Let's just
get through the big words. It is recommended valuable for rheumatism,
it's arthritis, also for muscle cramping as a liniment, and
of course it would be as asp in it right.

(40:16):
The infusion and essence both relieve irritation of the urethere
and bladder and are adopted in the incipient stages of
renal information. It's kidney issues. Tubeeephritis is said to have
been arrested by it even when the examination is revealed
in the urine the presence of blood. So really good
for kidney issues. Wow. Anyway, for specific indications and uses

(40:50):
used for societis prostatic irritation, undoe sexual excitement. In other words,
that could actually we could help with premature jack premature ejaculation.
Let me just put it that way, renal inflam inflammation.
They mentioned a few related species. Getting into the nineteen twenties,

(41:14):
jethro Claus said it was stimulant in a septic astringent,
diuretic and mintagague aromatic. He said this is an old
fashioned remedy taken with small and frequent doses. It will
stimulate the stomach, heart and respiration. Useful in chronic inflammatory rheumatism,
also romatic fever, sciatica, diabetes and bladder troubles, scropula and

(41:36):
skin disorders. Valuable in colic and gas in the bowels.
Helpful in dropsy, gonnery, astromic trouble, and obstructure of the vowels.
He said the oil went a grain used externally made
a good lineament uses a poultice good for boiling, boils, swellings, altars,
and inflammations. A douche could be used for lucrea, and

(41:58):
also good as a gargole for sore throat and mouth.
And you may notice my voice isn't quite right today.
Woke up with a terrible sore throat and a little
swelling of the glands, so I could probably use some
of this stuff right now. Tonguees a little swollen too.
I'm not sure exactly what's going on anyway, Getting up
to nineteen sixties, Branford, Bradford and Jeer. Interesting character. You

(42:24):
all know how much I love the works of George
Leonard Herder. Well, if George Leonard Herder had a protegee.
They he never met, presumably it would have been Bradford
and Jeer. Herder wrote dozens of books, fascinating books full
of useful information, from recipes to camping, to hunting, to

(42:47):
you name it. He was an outdoorsman. He wrote some
of the best cookbooks in America avid fishermen, usually putting
those useful tips of information into outland tall tales. He
was either a little nutty or had the best sense
of humor possible. And I think that's it, because he

(43:08):
really did seem to be absolutely brilliant. Well, and Ngier
comes along twenty thirty years later from George Herter, so
next generation at least, and he wants to write outdoor
books like Herder did. And he wrote some classics. He
wrote some of the best books on foraging, on how
to Stay Alive in the Woods. I mean, if you've

(43:29):
I mean that's been featured in movies and television. It's
one of the classics. I mean, that's the title, how
to Stay Alive in the Woods. He plagiarized a lot,
a lot, I mean, like taking other people's works entirely
and putting his own name on him. And he made
up a lot of stuff apparently, you know, maybe not,
but still and his wife was a very good artist.

(43:53):
So when it comes to his wild food and herbal
medicine books, which were really hard to find in the
sixties seventies when he was writing him, nobody was doing
it was like him and Yule Gibbons and that was
it right. Well, his wife was actually given illustrations, so
they're actually real classics. And you know, he's a character.
What can you say. He ripped off a few of

(44:16):
Herder's books. He ripped off a few here and there.
He had some guts about him, He definitely had. He
was audacious, you gotta admit that. But a lot of
his stuff's really good and solid information. He wrote of this,
he said, the Indians, passing along their pre Columbian war
to settlers long considered the leaves to be an important

(44:37):
remedy for arthritis and over exerted muscles and joints. Perhaps
a reason you can still smell it in locker rooms
and trading quarters. Oil winner green, like I said, is
no longer comes to the winding green plant, but yes,
still very much used in liniments and rubs and such.
Steep into a tee that was drunk for this purpose
and also used as a gargle for sore throats. Question

(44:59):
of poultice, as it was applied externally to aching and
painful parts, including those from arising from lambago. Such poultices
were placed on the swellings of boils, carbuncles, felons, wounds, rashes, eruptions, inflammation,
and even on aching teeth. These he misses it being aniseptic.
He says the Pinobscot tribe was believed to be helpful

(45:23):
treating gon rhea the soon as Pierce and others. Let's
stop it, oh use it for the salacin content for headaches, arthritis,
aching muscles. He said it was good for horse and
sore throats, wounds, used to staunch bleeding, even has some

(45:43):
coagulant properties, good for the kidnies and bladder, helpful and
dropsy and the tea used to stringer for deucers and
as an aniseptic wash. Bodania Day says the leaves contain
fennololic fin no lick glycoside, methyl salice silate, and like willow,
it can be used as aspirin. That's that's brief, Okay,

(46:07):
groovy okay. Plants for a future. This is Checkerberry and
talks about how to make oil of winter grain and
how useful it is related anti as related to aspirin
is an anti inflammatory. My gosh, it's swell. I'm telling
it's hard to talk with the species. At one time

(46:28):
was a major source of methyl salas eate. That's true.
It was over harvested for a while, but then they
found they could use birch twig, so that's good. Some
caution advice could be toxic and excess if you were
using the essential oil. So as always I say, don't
use essential oils internally, you know, unless you really have
a good reason to and you're an expert, you know whatever.

(46:52):
Pearson Field Guide for Eastern Central Medicinal Plants says traditionally
leaf tea was used for cold headaches, stomach ache, fee
there's kidney elements externally is washed for rheumatism, sore muscles,
and limbago. Essential oil and leaves is it has was
synthetically produced for the winter green formulas. So I guess,

(47:15):
so they figured out a chemical way to imitate the
essential oil. I guess is what that's what they're saying
experimentally is analgesic carminiti that means an upsettle stomach and
make you stup burping. Basically anti inflammatory, antiseptic. The inexperienced
small amounts have delayed the onset of tumors. Interesting warning.
The essential oil is highly toxic, can be absorbed through

(47:37):
the skin and harms the kidneys and liver. I don't
like essential oils, and now I know it's going to
upset a lot of people. I mean, next girlfriend of
mine was an aromatherapist. You everything she did was with
the essential oils. I don't remember. Essential oils are not
a natural form of an earth as such. They are

(47:59):
far more potent, and they can burn the skin like this,
absorbed through the skin, damage the liver. I don't like them.
They do other use, they do other place and purpose.
But when and if I use them, they I use
them a diluted form. I dilute them with a neutral oil,
usually olive oil. It's up to you if you want

(48:20):
to use the central oils or not. That's not my
school of herbalism. I I'm not big on them honestly now.
I mean a lot of people are, and they do
certainly have use in their place. But it's just not
my thing. So I do, however, really like winter grain.

(48:40):
My favorite gum is actually teaberry gum or well blackjack,
that's a liquorice gum. Impossible to find these days. You
can find them in like you know, mass General store
around here or some places that specialize in old candy.
I like Big Red, the cinnamon flavor gum. I do

(49:00):
like you know, urban and spice flavored gums quite a bit.
Clove cloth is probably my favorite, actually, but yeah, I
like the taste of winter grain. I like actually quite
a lot. And I do use this plant when I
find it. And the chimpodium, the alligator or spotted winter
green that is really more prevalent in North Carolina, much

(49:25):
much lower, much weaker in flavor and medicinal potency. I
use them when I find them, and they're really good plants.
Trying to overharvest them, try to grow some if I can.
And actually you may be able to find winter green
seeds the gloth area in certain sea catalogs. I believe
even Burpie or Vessi, one of the big maybe Park

(49:49):
one of those three, I'm sure it's one of of them,
actually carries those seeds in their catalog, so it's one
you can get going in the garden, and if you do,
it's a pretty little plant and very useful. You're not
gonna regret it, so definitely do that. All Right, y'all
have a great week, and I'll talk to you next time.

(50:09):
M hm.

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Show 238: Wild Strawberry, Winter Cress, Galax and Wintergreen

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