The Herbal Medicine-Maker's Handbook_ A Home Manual - James Green [28]
It becomes a win-win situation once we learn to harvest in a style that allows the ecology to recover. If you see that someone else, whether human or animal, has already harvested a plant community, leave it alone and move on. When you dig a root, in most cases you take the life of the plant. This is appropriate, life eats life; it is part of the circle of giving; but give sacred honor to the giver. Cultivate gratefulness in your heart for the plant’s offering to your life. Prepare and dispense root medicines with this heightened appreciation. With the above acts of regard you perpetuate abundance. The EcoHerbalist’s Fieldbook, written by Gregory Tilford, is an extraordinary work that will help you harvest with mindful heart. (See Resources.)
WHAT TO HARVEST AND WHEN
A seasoned herbalist does not gather the various parts of plants used to make herbal medicines randomly, or at just any time of the year. There is a specific time in Earth’s solar and lunar cycles when an herb will yield its best “medicine.” Herbalists for thousands of years have recorded information concerning the proper time to pick various herbs. And of course, being experts, they don’t always agree with each other. However, most do agree that during specific periods of the plant’s yearly growth and daily life cycle the medicinal constituents are more fully developed and abundant in certain parts of the plant than they are in others.
Plants are conveniently divided, for the purposes of the herbalist, into the roots (and/or rhizomes), stem, inner and outer bark, leaves, buds, flowers, saps and pitches, fruits, and seeds. These different parts require different procedures for collection, drying, and preservation.
Roots
Roots of biennial plants should be dug in the fall of the first year or in the very early spring of the second year (they die in the fall of the second year as the plant goes to seed). Perennial plants should be dug late in the fall after the aerial parts have died back and the sap has returned underground, or dig them very early in the spring when the energy of the plant is still most active in the root. If you dig them in the spring, do so immediately after the plant first appears above the ground, before too much of the sap and vital focus of the plant ascend from the root to manifest stem and leaf. In general, perennial roots should not be gathered until after two or three years’ growth, and in some cases the root should be allowed three to seven years to develop full maturity. Roots of annual plants are best dug immediately before the time of flowering. However, annual plant roots are seldom used as medicines. For herbal medicine-makers who are attentive to lunar as well as solar influences, dig roots on the new moon.
Fleshy or succulent roots should be cut previous to drying to expose a large surface area to the air. Cutting roots transversely or longitudinally is more a matter of which you enjoy doing more; however, I find that if before dehydrating them you cut roots transversely in small sections, they are easier to grind into powder later, especially those roots which are quite woody or fibrous. Root-rhizomes like Oregon Grape become very hard and woody when dry, so they are best cut into very short sections while undried. Smaller, more fibrous roots are best left whole.
If you are not using a root immediately to prepare a fresh, undried plant extract, it is important that the root or other parts of the plant be thoroughly dried. Whereas it is normally adequate to dry most plants in a heat of about 100° F., in the case of Dandelion, Burdock, and other succulent roots, apply a heat of about 150°, and thoroughly dry them in order to destroy