The Land of Painted Caves - Jean M. Auel [112]
She was drawn to a sunny dry, grassy place, detected a delightful aromatic fragrance, and looked for the plant that liked to grow there. She quickly found hyssop. It was one of the first plants Iza had taught her about and she remembered the occasion well. It was a woody little shrub that grew something more than a foot high, with narrow evergreen leaves, small and dark green, crowding together along the branching stems. The intense blue flowers, circling the stem among the upper leaves on long spikes, had just started to appear and several bees were buzzing around them. She wondered where the hive was, since honey flavored with hyssop was especially tasty.
She picked several of the stalks, planning to use the flowers for tea, which was not only delicious, but especially good for coughs, hoarseness, and deep chest conditions. The leaves when bruised were also good for relieving cuts and burns, and for reducing bruises. Drinking the tea of the leaves and soaking the limbs in a bath of it were a good treatment for rheumatism. Thinking of that brought a sudden thought of Creb, which made her smile even as it brought a memory of sadness. One of the other medicine women at the Clan Gathering had explained that she also used hyssop for the swelling of the legs caused by retaining too much fluid. Ayla glanced up and saw Wolf still lying beside her sleeping baby, then turned and went more deeply into the woods.
On a shady bank near some spruce trees Ayla spied a patch of woodruff, a little plant about ten inches high with leaves growing in circles, similar to cleavers, but with a weak stem. She bent down on her knees to carefully pick the plant with its leaves and tiny white four-petaled flowers. It had its own delicious scent and made a tasty tea, and Ayla knew the fragrance would grow stronger when it was dried. The leaves could be used for wounds, and when boiled they were good for stomachaches and other internal disorders. It was useful to disguise the sometimes unpleasant smell of other medicines, but she also liked to spread it around her dwelling, and to stuff pillows with it because of its natural perfume.
Not far away she saw another familiar plant that liked shady banks in woods, this one close to two feet high, wood avens. The toothed leaves, shaped somewhat like wide feathers and covered with small hairs, were sparsely scattered along its wiry stems, which branched slightly. The leaves were not uniform in size or shape, depending upon their position on the stem. On the lower branches, the leaves grew on long stalks and had irregular spaces between the leaflets, with the terminal one large and rounder. The intermediate pairs were smaller and somewhat different in shape and size. The higher-up leaves were three-fingered and narrow, the lower ones rounder. The flowers, which rather resembled buttercups, had five bright-yellow petals with green sepals between, and seemed too small for such a tall plant. The fruits, which appeared together with the flowers, were more conspicuous and ripened into the small, bristly heads of dark-red burrs.
But Ayla dug down for the rhizome from which the plant grew. She wanted the small, wiry rootlets that had the scent and flavor of cloves. She knew they were good for many things, for stomach problems, including diarrhea, for sore throat, fever, and the stuffiness and mucus of a cold, even for bad breath, but she especially liked to use them as a pleasant, mildly spicy, clove-like seasoning for food.
She saw plants some distance away that she thought at first were a patch of violets, but which on closer inspection turned out to be ground ivy. The flowers