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By Root 893 0

how best to harvest them, make medicine with them, touch, taste, smell, and use them. The energies of thirty to thirty-five herbs will enchant you and keep you sufficiently busy for the following year or two. Distinguished individuals from the remaining myriad of herbs that dwell on Earth will, one by one, as situations arise, attract your attention and attach themselves to your initial repertory.

So, the subsequent question arises: “Which few select herbs should I choose?”

Well, the most important principle to guide you in this very personal selection is to embrace any and all plants that you are intuitively attracted to: those that touch your spirit in an exceptionally deep and personal way. These are relationships that you never want to ignore. A second reliable criterion is to select herbs that grow near you and can be found thriving in the bioregion you inhabit, or in closely neighboring bio-regions. The plants you select should be fairly easy to acquire and always of excellent quality. Flirt with the currently fashionable and exotic imports, by all means, but don’t become dependent on their availability.

Most herb students commence their studies by gleaning information found in popular herb books, and the number of herbs discussed in today’s herbal literature can be overwhelming. At least, I have found this to be the experience of many students before they connected with a teacher or attended an herb school. So, if I may assist you with some specific suggestions, I will give you an historic and authoritative list of plants that you might consider as you orchestrate your first line of green allies, or you can at least refer to this list as a model for choosing a comparable group of plants that live in your area.

The authoritative history: In the late 1980s the California School of Herbal Studies (CSHS) was co-directed by six herbalists: Tim Blakley, David Hoffmann, Amanda McQuade Crawford, Mindy Green, Gina Banghart, and myself. We decided that, in order to align our individual classes throughout the year, it would be helpful for all of us to focus on the personalities, actions, and indications of a central core of tonic and therapeutic plants. As an initial step to develop this group of medicinals, each of us agreed to provide a list of thirty favored plants that we felt could be relied upon to supply an herbalist with pretty much any and all the herbal actions and uplifting virtues required to provide good health care in a home and community. The succeeding task of grafting our lists together and then pruning the aggregation back to thirty plants proved to be an interesting journey of forbearance and compromise; the results of that saga attest to the fact that, on a rare occasion, even experts can come to an agreement, or at least cross-pollinate their opinions. The hybrid list we ultimately compiled and felt reasonably good about included the following thirty plants.

CSHS LIST OF 30 HERBS

Blackberry (Rubus villosus)

*Black Cohosh (Cimicifuga racemosa)

Calendula (Calendula officinalis)

Cayenne (Capsicum annuum)

Chamomile, German (Matricaria recutita)

Cleavers (Galium aperine)

Comfrey (Symphytum officinale)

Crampbark (Viburnum opulus)

Dandelion (Taraxacum officinale)

*Echinacea (Echinacea purpurea)

Elder (Sambucus nigra)

Fennel (Foeniculum vulgare)

Ginger (Zingiber officinale)

*Goldenseal (Hydrastis canadensis)

Gumweed (Grindelia spp.)

Hawthorn (Crataegus oxyacanthus)

Marshmallow (Althaea officinalis)

Mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris)

Mullein (Verbascum spp.)

Nettle (Urtica spp.)

Peppermint (Mentha piperita)

*Pipsissewa (Chimaphilla umbellata)

Plantain (Plantago lanceolata or P. major)

St. John’s Wort (Hypericum perforatum)

Scullcap (Scutellaria spp.)

Valerian (Valeriana officinalis)

Vitex (Vitex agnus-castus)

Willow (Salix alba)

Yarrow (Achillea millefolium)

Yellow Dock (Rumex crispus)

I have asterisked the plants which are broadly used in commerce and which,