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2.17.05

I took the kids out for a wander and a picnic this afternoon. Rani decided to take off and do a little hunting on his own, but the others were quite happy to stay close by. Nehanda and I are coming near the end of "Daughter of the Forest," and I'm debating what to start next.

(Post here.)

But in any case, it was a very relaxing day, aside from a little sunburn i picked up. I'm usually better about applying lotion, so shame on me for forgetting.

We also ran into Fae and her kids. Nahda was very excited to meet Twizzler, anpther Tahnee, and Pueblo has evolved! She's really just the cutest mix of owl and wolf that I've ever imagined.

I'm getting a real kick out of researching herbs. i expect that Nehanda will start her own once she's able to, but i hope she'll find my notes useful, even if it means that she'll have to dig through the folk lore tha tI find so fascinating.

Today's herb is Arnica.
Arnica [Arnica montana] is also commonly called leopard's bane and wolf's bane. The leaves form a flat rosette, from the centre of which rises a flower stalk, 1 to 2 feet high, bearing orange-yellow flowers. The rhizome is dark brown, cylindrical, usually curved, and bears brittle wiry rootlets on the under surface. Preparations made from the flowering heads (which bloom about July) have been used in homeopathic medicine for hundreds of years. It is popular in Germany and over 100 drug preparations are made from the plant. Arnica is a perennial that is protected in parts of Europe.

The active components in arnica are sesquiterpene lactones, which are known to reduce inflammation and decrease pain. Other active principals are thymol (an essential oil), flavonoids, inulin, carotenoids and tannins.

Arnica works by stimulating the activity of white blood cells that perform much of the digestion of congested blood, and by dispersing trapped, disorganized fluids from bumped and bruised tissue, joints and muscles.

Arnica is known to stimulate blood circulation and can raise blood pressure, especially in the coronary arteries. The plant is used externally for arthritis, burns, ulcers, eczema and acne. It has anti-bacterial and anti-inflammatory qualities that can reduce pain and swelling, improving wound healing.

2.20.05, and boy, am I tired.

The weekend was a very hectic one. Friday saw several hours of dance practice, and all of Saturday was spent in the same way! Except that it wasn't for practice. I was one my feet, dancing them off, for too many hours, and my ankle is throbbing because of it.

But Nehanda had a wonderful time, I think. "Animals" really aren't allowed into the dance hall, but I snuck her in by way of a large bag. She loved the music, and we had a very good time laughing at several of the costumes. I'm not at all sure if this is something she'll be interested in once she's evolved into her humanoid form, but it's nice that i know she can enjoy watching.

In any case, we had a good time at Fae's today. Nehanda and Pueblo get along so very well. So do Twizzler and Nahda, although I think Nahda may have be a slightly disruptive influence. That little girl just has no manners. she's so very loud. and while they were playing hide-and-go-seek, she tripped, resulting in a broken lamp and a good knock on the head. I felt so horrible about it.
(RP found here and here.)

When we got home, I couldn't find any over-the-counter pain killers, and my ankle was hurting enough that I really needed the cane I had taken with me. I decided that all of the herbalism research I had been doing might as well do some good. Several of the herbs seedlings have begun to sprout fully-formed, healthy leaves, and I'm pretty sure it was okay to pluck them. Others I already had in dried form. I mixed it with vinegar, and made a compress, which I am now using on my foot. We'll have to wait and see, but at least Nehanda enjoyed helping me put the entire mess together!

On that note, we have reached Wood Betony in my Herb notes tonight.

(Wood) Betony [Stachys Betonica], also known as Bishopswort, is a pretty woodland plant, met with frequently throughout England, but by no means common in Scotland. Though generally growing in woods and copses, it is occasionally to be found in more open situations, and amongst the tangled growths on heaths and moors.

There are five species of Stachys known that grow both cultivated and wild - the once much-valued Betony (S. Betonica); the Marsh Stachys, or Clown's Woundwort (S. palustris); the true Woundwort (S. Germanica), a doubtful native, occurring occasionally on limestone soils in England, but very common on the Continent, where the dense covering of its leaves was at one time in rustic surgery employed in the place of lint for dressing wounds, the low-creeping Field Stachys (S. arvensis); and the Hedge Stachys, or Hedge Woundwort (S. sylvatica), perhaps the commonest of them all.

The Wood Betony (S. Betonica according to present-day nomenclature, though nemed Betonica officinalis, by Linnaeus) was held in high repute not only in the Middle Ages, but also by the Greeks who extolled its qualities. An old Italian proverb, ' Sell your coat and buy Betony, ' and 'He has as many virtues as Betony,' a saying of the Spaniards, show what value was placed on its remedial properties. Antonius Musa, chief physician to the Emperor Augustus, wrote a long treatise, showing it was a certain cure for no less than forty seven diseases.

Throughout the centuries, faith in its virtues as a panacea for all ills was thoroughly ingrained in the popular estimation. It was largely cultivated in the physic gardens, both of the apothecaries and the monasteries, and may still be found growing about the sites of these ancient buildings. Robert Turner, a physician writing in the latter half of the seventeenth century, recounts nearly thirty complaints for which Betony was considered efficacious, and adds, 'I shall conclude with the words I have found in an old manuscript under the virtues of it: "More than all this have been proved of Betony." '

In addition to its medicinal virtues, Betony was endowed with power against evil spirits. On this account, it was carefully planted in churchyards and hung about the neck as an amulet or charm, sanctifying, as Erasmus tells us, 'those that carried it about them,' and being also 'good against fearful visions' and an efficacious means of 'driving away devils and despair.' An old writer, Apelius, says, 'It is good whether for the man's soul or for his body; it shields him against visions and dreams, and the wort is very wholesome, and thus thou shalt gather it, in the month of August without the use of iron; and when thou hast gathered it, shake the mold till nought of it cleave thereon, and then dry it in the shade very thoroughly, and with its root altogether reduce it to dust: then use it and take of it when thou needst.'

Many extravagant superstitions grew up round Betony, one, of very ancient date, was that serpents would fight and kill each other if placed within a ring composed of it; and others declared that even wild beasts recognized its efficacy and used it if wounded, and that stags, if wounded with a dart, would search out Betony, and, eating it, be cured.

Betony was once the sovereign remedy for all maladies of the head, and its properties as a nervine and tonic are still acknowledged, though it is more frequently employed in combination with other nervines than alone. It is useful in hysteria, palpitations pain in the head and face, neuralgia and all nervous affections. In the Medicina Britannica (1666) we read: 'I have known the most obstinate headaches cured by daily breakfasting for a month or six weeks on a decoction of Betony made with new milk and strained.'

As an aromatic, it has also astringent and alterative action, and combined with other remedies is used as a tonic in dyspepsia and as an alterative in rheumatism, scrofula and impurities of the blood. The weak infusion forms a very acceptable substitute for tea, and in this way is extensively used in many localities. It has somewhat the taste of tea and all the good qualities of it, without the bad ones. To make Betony tea, pour a pint of boiling water on an ounce of the dried herb. A wineglassful of this decoction three times a dayproves a benefit against languid nervous headaches.

The dried herb may also be smoked as tobacco, combined with Eyebright and Coltsfoot, for relieving headache. A pinch of the powdered herb will provoke violent sneezing. The dried leaves formed an ingredient in Rowley's British Herb Snuff, which was at one time quite famous for headaches.

The fresh leaves are said to have an intoxicating effect. They have been used to dye wool a fine yellow.

Gerard tells us, among other uses, that Betony, 'preserveth the lives and bodies of men from the danger of epidemical diseases. It helpeth those that loathe and cannot digest their food. It is used either dry or green either the root or herb - or the flowers, drunk in broth or meat or made into conserve syrup, water, electuary or powder - as everyone may best frame themselves, or as time or season requires.'

He proceeds to say that the herb cures the jaundice, falling sickness, palsy, convulsions, gout, dropsy and head troubles, and that 'the powder mixed with honey is no less available for all sorts of colds or cough, wheezing, of shortness of breath and consumption,' also that 'the decoction made with mead and Pennyroyal is good for putrid agues,' and made in wine is good as a vermifuge, 'and also removes obstructions of the spleen and liver.' Again, 'the decoction with wine gargled in the mouth easeth the toothache.... It is a cure for the bites of mad dogs.... A dram of the powder taken with a little honey in some vinegar is good for refreshing those that are wearied by travel. It stayeth bleeding at the nose and mouth, and helpeth those that spit blood, and is good for those that have a rupture and are bruised. The green herb bruised, or the juice, applied to any inward hurt, or outward wound in body or head will quickly heal and close it up. It will draw forth any broken bone or splinter, thorn or other thing gotten into the flesh, also healeth old sores or ulcers and boils. The root is displeasing both to taste and stomach, whereas the leaves and flowers by their sweet and spicy taste, comfort both in meat and medicine.'


I should include here that betony is one of the plants included in the mess currently sitting on my ankle. I hope all of this is true!

2.21.05

Nehanda and I had our first fight tonight. I don't think you could really call it an argument; it's difficult to argue with someone whose only response is "merp!" But it was definitely a fight.

I had been upsrairs, putting Nahda to bed. The little thing was still a bit out of it after her knock on the head over at Fae's -even an entire day later!- and she was incredibly clingy. Perhaps I should say cuddly and in need of comfort, but it really comes down to the same thing. It took me a while to have her close her eyes.

I came downstairs and heard noises coming from the kitchen. Nehanda was fluttering over the stove. I suppose those toes of hers are just mobile enough to turn on a burner, because she was hovering around a pot that she had placed upon a lit burner. She was putting various herbs in, and I could smell wine and honey. Both liquids had been spilt over the counter, and bits and pieces of plants littered the floor.

The flames of the burner were too high, and one lick of fire nearly caught a wing feather.

I . . . snapped. Having just come from dealing with one injured child, I was not prepared to see another hurt. The one thing that I can often be accused of is over-protectiveness.

I ran in and turned the burner off. Then I began to to yell at Nehanda. I mean, I was really tearing into her. I said some things that I didn't mean, about her garden and the herbs, and whatever she was trying to do with her concotion.

The little gryphon was flying around me, merping at the top of her lungs, and her body language was very angry. Eventually, I played the parental "Because I said so" card, and sent her off to bed. Then I turned to the pot to start cleaning up after her. Astonishingly, what I smelled and saw matched, exactly, one of the recipes I had written down for a headache-relief potion.

Nehanda had been trying to make Nahda feel better.

I felt like an over-protective fool.

I cleaned up, and came into my room, where I am now, sitting at my desk. Nahanda must be upstairs, with Nahda; I can't blame her for wanting to avoid me.

I can't say I'm really in the mood now to write about herb lore, but I did promise myself. So here it is, and then I'm finishing this entry and going to bed.

Bloodroot [Sanguinaria Candensis] is also known as Indian Paint, Tetterwort, Red Pucoon, Red Root, Paucon, Coon Root, Snakebite, and Sweet Slumber. A perennial plant, it is one of the earliest and most beautiful spring flowers. It has a lovely white flower and produces only a single leaf and a flowering scape about 6 inches high. When the leaf first appears it is wrapped round the flower bud and is a greyish-green colour covered with a downy bloom - Leaves palmate five to nine lobed, 6 to 10 inches long. After flowering the leaves increase in size, the underside paler showing prominent veins. The white flower is wax-like with golden stamens. The seed is an oblong narrow pod about 1 inch long. The rootstock is thick, round and fleshy, slightly curved at ends, and contains an orange-red juice, and is about 1 to 4 inches long, with orange-red rootlets. When dried it breaks with a short sharp fracture, little smell, taste bitter acrid and persistent, powdered root causes sneezing and irritation of the nose. The root is collected in the autumn, after leaves die down; it must be stored in a dry place or it quickly deteriorates.

Bloodroot is an emetic cathartic expectorant and emmenagogue, and of great value in atonic dyspepsia, asthma, bronchitis and croup. (The taste is so nauseating, that it may cause expectorant action.) Of value in pulmonary consumption, nervous irritation and helpful in lowering high pulse, and in heart disease and weakness and palpitation of heart of great use. For ringworm apply the fluid extract. Also good for torpid liver, scrofula, dysentery. It is applied to fungoid growths, ulcers fleshy excrescences, cancerous affections and as an escharotic. Sanguinaria root is chiefly used as an expectorant for chronic bronchitis and as a local application in chronic eczema, specially when secondary to varicose ulcers. In toxic doses, it causes burning in the stomach, intense thirst, vomiting, faintness vertigo, intense prostration with dimness of eyesight.

The root has long been used by the American Indians as a dye for their bodies and clothes and has been used successfully by American and French dyers.

2.23.05

Nehanda woke me up this morning with excited merps, jumping all over the bed. It would seem that one of her little rose bushes had sprouted its very first blossom, and it was a lovely peach bloom. Well, needless to say, she was quite proud of herself! The sweetest thing, however, is that she decided to give the rose to Aly.

And speaking of which, it was his birthday today. We brought balloons and food over to the Comuunity Center, and had ourselves a little party. (Party.)

It was pretty quiet for a few hours, but then Aly showed up, and Fae, and things were a bit more fun.

I'm tired, so here's my herbal info for the day:
We're into the C's now!

Calamint [Calamintha officinalis] also goes by Mill Mountain, Mountain Balm, Basil Thyme, and Mountain Mint. It belongs to a genus closely related to both the Thymes and to Catnep and Ground Ivy. It is an erect, bushy plant with square stems, rarely more than a foot high, bearing pairs of opposite leaves, which, like the stems, are downy with soft hairs. The flowers bloom in July and August, and are somewhat inconspicuous, drooping gracefully before expansion: the corollas are of a light purple colour.

The plant grows by waysides and in hedges, and is not uncommon, especially in dry places. It may be cultivated as a hardy perennial, propagated by seeds sown outdoors in April, by cuttings of side shoots in cold frames in spring, or by division of roots in October and April.

Calamint is a diaphoretic, expectorant, and an aromatic. The whole herb has a sweet, aromatic odour and an infusion of the dried leaves, collected about July, when in their best condition and dried in the same way as Catmint tops, makes a pleasant cordial tea, which was formerly much taken for weaknesses of the stomach and flatulent colic. It is useful in hysterical complaints, and a conserve made of the young fresh tops has been used, for this purpose.

Culpepper says that it 'is very efficacious in all afflictions of the brain,' that it 'relieves convulsions and cramps, shortness of breath or choleric pains in the stomach or bowels,' and that 'it cures the yellow jaundice.' He also recommends it, taken with salt and honey, for killing worms:

'It relieves those who have the leprosy, taken inwardly, drinking whey after it, or the green herb outwardly applied, and that it taketh away black and blue marks in the face, and maketh black scars become well coloured, if the green herb (not the dry) be boiled in wine and laid to the place or the place washed therewith.'

He also considers it 'helpful to them that have a tertian ague,' and beneficial in all disorders of the gall and spleen.

Gerard says, 'the seede cureth the infirmities of the hart, taketh away sorrowfulnesse which commeth of melancholie, and maketh a man merrie and glad.'

The Lesser Calamint [Calamintha nepeta] is a variety of the herb possessing almost superior virtues, with a stronger odour, resembling that of Pennyroyal, and a moderately pungent taste somewhat like Spearmint, but warmer. It is scarcely distinct from C. officinalis, and by some botanists is considered a sub-species. The leaves are more strongly toothed, and it bears its flowers on longer stalks. Both this and the Common Calamint seem to have been used indifferently in the old practice of medicine under the name of Calamint.

The name of the genus, Calamintha, is derived from the Greek Kalos (excellent because of the ancient belief in its power to drive away serpents and the dreaded basilisk - the fabled king of the serpents, whose very glance was fatal.

2.25.05

Big happenings on the Island. Kiiato has fallen very ill -something about the island environment- and has been moved back to the mainland. As a result, poor little Keanu was left without a guardian. Poor Aly; he really was rather beside himself!

Fortunately, one of the newcomers to the island, Kamileun, has been givin guardianship. I know her from other shops back in Gaia, and she's a very pleasant, intelligent person. It will be nice to see her around Cetalu.

As for myself, I have to go on a trip next week. I'll probably be leaving Nehanda and Nahda with Fae, Pueblo, and Twizzler. I can't say i like the idea of leaving my little girls behind, but . . . I really think they'd be very unhappy -and bored, more dangerously- if along for this trip.

But enough. Herbal study for the day . . .

Catmint [Nepeta cataria] is better known as Catnep. A wild English plant belonging to the large family Labiatae, of which the Mints and Deadnettles are also members, it is generally distributed throughout the central and the southern counties of England, in hedgerows, borders of fields, and on dry banks and waste ground, especially in chalky and gravelly soil. It is less common in the north, very local in Scotland and rare in Ireland, but of frequent occurrence in the whole of Europe and temperate Asia, and also common in North Arnerica, where originally. however. it was an introduced species.

The root is perennial and sends up square, erect and branched stems, 2 to 3 feet high, which are very leafy and covered with a mealy down. The heartshaped, toothed leaves are also covered with a soft, close down, especially on the under sides, which are quite white with it, so that the whole plant has a hoary, greyish appearance, as though it had had dust blown over it.

The flowers grow on short footstalks in dense whorls, which towards the summit of the stem are so close as almost to form a spike. They are in bloom from July to September. The individual flowers are small, the corollas two-lipped, the upper lip straight, of a whitish or pale pink colour, dotted with red spots, the anthers a deep red colour. The calyx tube has fifteen ribs, a distinguishing feature of the genus Nepeta, to which this species belongs.

The plant has an aromatic, characteristic odour, which bears a certain resemblance to that of both Mint and Pennyroyal. It is owing to this scent that it has a strange fascination for cats, who will destroy any plant of it that may happen to be bruised. There is an old saying about this plant:
'If you set it, the cats will eat it,
If you sow it, the cats don't know it.'

And it seems to be a fact that plants transplanted are always destroyed by cats unless protected, but they never meddle with the plants raised from seed, being only attracted to it when it is in a withering state, or when the peculiar scent of the plant is excited by being bruised in gathering or transplanting.

In France the leaves and young shoots are used for seasoning, and it is regularly grown amongst kitchen herbs for the purpose. Both there and in this country, it has an old reputation for its value as a medicinal herb. Miss Bardswell, in The Herb Garden, writes of Catmint, 'Before the use of tea from China, our English peasantry were in the habit of brewing Catmint Tea, which they said was quite as pleasant and a good deal more wholesome. Ellen Montgomery in The Wide, Wide World made Catmint Tea for Miss Fortune when she was ill. It is stimulating. The root when chewed is said to make the most gentle person fierce and quarrelsome, and there is a legend of a certain hangman who could never screw up his courage to the point of hanging anybody till he had partaken of it. Rats dislike the plant particularly, and will not approach it even when driven by hunger.'

This dislike of rats for Catmint might well be utilized by growing it round other valuable crops as a protective screen.

Closely allied to the Catmint is the Ground Ivy (Nepeta glechoma, Benth.), named Glechoma hederacea by Linnaeus.

The flowering tops are the part utilized in medicine and are harvested when the plant is in full bloom in August. A carminative, tonic, diaphoretic, refrigerant and slightly emmenagogue, it is specially antispasmodic, and mildly stimulating.

Producing free perspiration, it is very useful in colds. Catnep Tea is a valuable drink in every case of fever, because of its action in inducing sleep and producing perspiration without increasing the heat of the system. It is good in restlessness, colic, insanity and nervousness, and is used as a mild nervine for children, one of its chief uses being, indeed, in the treatment of children's ailments. The infusion of 1 OZ. to a pint of boiling water may be taken by adults in doses of 2 tablespoonsful, by children in 2 or 3 teaspoonsful frequently, to relieve pain and flatulence. An injection of Catnep Tea is also used for colicky pains.

The herb should always be infused, boiling will spoil it. Its qualities are somewhat volatile, hence when made it should be covered up. The tea may be drunk freely, but if taken in very large doses when warm, it frequently acts as an emetic. It has proved efficacious in nervous headaches and as an emmenagogue, though for the latter purpose, it is preferable to use Catnep, not as a warm tea, but to express the juice of the green herb and take it in tablespoonful doses, three times a day. An injection of the tea also relieves headache and hysteria, by its immediate action upon the sacral plexus. The young tops, made into a conserve, have been found serviceable for nightmare.

Catnep may be combined with other agents of a more decidedly diaphoretic nature. Equal parts of warm Catnep tea and Saffron are excellent in scarlet-fever and small-pox, as well as colds and hysterics. It will relieve painful swellings when applied in the form of a poultice or fomentation.

Old writers recommended a decoction of the herb, sweetened with honey for relieving a cough, and Culpepper tells us also that 'the juice drunk in wine is good for bruises,' and that 'the green leaves bruised and made into an ointment is effectual for piles,' and that 'the head washed with a decoction taketh away scabs, scurf, etc.'