The Herbal Medicine-Maker's Handbook_ A Home Manual - James Green [9]
Yes, I know; where’s Milk Thistle, where’s Sage, where’s Usnea, where’s.… Undeniably, this list screams out the names of countless time-honored herbs that have not been included, and I must say (using this opportunity to get in a “last word”), the herbs that would be at the top of the list of thirty (if anybody would have listened to me) are listed below.
GREEN’S LONG-AWAITED
EMBELLISHMENTS
Burdock (Arctium lappa)
Ginkgo (Ginkgo biloba)
Oat (wild: Avena fatua, cultivated: Avena sativa)
Saw Palmetto (Serenoa serrulata)
Siberian Ginseng (Eleuthrococcus senticosus)
And then there’s Reishi mushroom (Ganoderma lucidum), a fungus, and.… Well, you can appreciate the problem we faced.
Please note that most of the thirty plants on the CSHS list grow in abundance in the northern California region where our school is located, but as you may also notice, love transcends all rules and common sense, and some of our most favored plants that made it onto the list don’t normally grow here. Ginger thrives in moist tropical regions; Goldenseal and Black Cohosh live in moist and shady Eastern hardwood forests; Echinacea lives in the open plains of the Midwest; and Pipsissewa, although it lives in Pacific Northwest forests, grows very slowly, and therefore, even if harvested correctly does not recover rapidly. With the recently ballooning popularity of herbal medicine in this country, these five plants have all become highly sought-after medicináis, and while Ginger is abundantly cultivated and therefore not threatened by its popularity, the other four plants are not yet being adequately cultivated and are being plucked from their relatively small native stands at far too rapid a rate. They are simply being over-harvested from their native environment in order to supply the soaring commercial demands of people living in the other bio-regions of the U.S. as well as in Canada and many countries overseas.
The survival of these four plants is currently at great risk, and therefore humans need to find substitutes whenever possible (preferably plants that grow in our own backyard bio-regions) until these plants can be cultivated adequately to supply our commercial demands. As you can see, since the time we developed our CSHS list of thirty herbs, herbalists and other plant people have become quite alert to the fact that a number of important medicinal plants (in addition to the four on our list) are currently extremely harvest-sensitive. So, with deep regard for all these plants, I offer the following suggestions and ask you to heed them:
In general, regarding the four at-risk plants that appear on the above list of thirty:
Please become familiar with United Plant Savers’ (UpS) list of “at-risk” medicinal plants and avoid using them until we can escort them back to their natural state of abundance. (See Appendix A for this list as well as an introduction to the work of UpS.)
Use Black Cohosh sparingly, only when it is specifically indicated (see indications, this page) and when there is no substitute available. In this regard, for those living in the Pacific Northwest region, there is our Baneberry (Actea rubra), a close relative of Black Cohosh, that can be harvested and prepared as a reliable substitute. The root of Baneberry offers nearly all the same actions as Black Cohosh root. Yes, the berries of Baneberry are toxic, but its root is not (that’s why we don’t call it Baneroot). In fact, in the early 1900s batches of Black Cohosh were often adulterated by mixing Baneberry root with the Cohosh. When taken as a tincture, Baneberry root bestows the same anti-inflammatory, sedative, and anti-spasmodic action for relieving the vast array of dull aching pains as does Black Cohosh. For a multitude of reasons, but specifically for invaluable insight into