the plants

“There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance. Pray you, love, remember.

And there is pansies, that’s for thoughts” – Ophelia, Shakespeare

Do you remember your first interaction with a medicinal plant? You were probably so young that the concept of a plant being medicinal at all wasn’t yet a formed thought. As a kid, a plant is just a plant. But, maybe it was your grandmother brewing up some bay leaf tea while you were sick, or your mom handing you a sprig of rosemary or lavender so you can smell the aroma. Maybe it was a simple rose bush that came back year after year despite the increasingly cold winters.

Plants connect us to our natural world. Their physical qualities communicate their medicine and show us how they heal. This is called doctrine of signature. The rose bush comes back with an abundance of vitamin c in their rosehips, their offering to help us get through the harshest of winters.

Plants are teachers, healers, but they hold a deeper more mystical quality as well. You can take a handful of the rosehips in your front yard and make a strong cup of tea --more vitamin c than five oranges – or you can grab a vitamin c pack from the local store. When we reach for the plants, we are in an agreement there is a promise made (maybe consciously, maybe unconsciously) that they will help us not just with their healing alkaloids, but more importantly, that their spirit will walk with us, will comfort us; not just our bodies, but they will soothe our soul. The act of harvesting those rosehips alone, starts that process.

We, as humans, are meaning makers, and we were born to a world where the stories and meanings of plants guided the lives of our ancestors. Maybe it was a bit of trial and error for them, but regardless of how they developed their relationship to herbs and flowers, the spirits and healing powers of those plants walked alongside them.

And, they still walk alongside us as healers and teachers, so long as we are willing to listen and offer them our respect and attention.