The Moist Issue

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i: Editorial

Harvest Kyra Pollitt In the village where I grew up, this time of year was the busiest, and everyone— man, woman, and child — was recruited to help with the harvest. Whilst that way of living in community and communion with nature seems long past, the Earth still teaches us the importance of honouring its rhythms. So, it’s at harvest time when, here in the UK, we begin to emerge from the strictures of lockdown. Shops and meeting places are re-opening, streets are peopled, students are flooding the arteries of Scotland’s main cities with youthful energy, and we are blessed with an Indian summer. The sun is shining as fruits fall, berries and hips ripen, leaves and bracken turn, fungi flourish, heather blooms, and Herbology News returns…

In this Moist Issue, we pay attention to those morning mists and darkening, dampening nights. Dora Wagner (Anthroposophical Views) tackles the ‘yucky’ topic of mucus— what it is and why we have it — whilst Joseph Nolan (Of Weeds & Weans) teaches us what to do if we have too much or too little of it.

Prominent in Joseph’s herbal medicine cabinet is Marianne Hughes’ Herb of the Month, Marshmallow (Althaea officinalis) — flowering so prettily in the damp areas of Scotland just now. Flowers are the focus for Rose Morley (Flower Power), who shares the wisdom of flower remedies, whilst flowers, fruits and all manner of things adorn the gloriously Gothic-Romantic water tableaux conjured by Kahn & Selesnick (Artists of the Month) for their Tarot of a Drowning World. More urgently, Patrick Dunne (The Climate Column) explains why we should #StopCambo if we want to save what remains of our drowning world and help reverse our climate emergency.

David Hughes (Our Man in the Field) confesses his earlier horticultural climate crimes and shares his journey to more sustainable gardening, via cation exchange and an awful lot of wet buckets in his garage. Claire Gormley’s Chemistry Column gives us a much deeper understanding of the water in those buckets, explaining what makes H2O so important and unique. Meanwhile, Ramsey Affifi (Jazz Ecology) asks how much knowledge is enough and wonders what has happened to the erotic of scientific inquiry. His concern is echoed in Odile Kennel’s poem ‘why don’t you write something erotic’ (StAnza Presents…). And whilst Ella Leith (Foraging through Folklore) offers a perfectly reasonable scientific explanation for the Will-o’the-Wisp, she ably demonstrates that the ‘limpelty lobelty’ folkloric can be far more enticing.

Sadly, our resident recipe maestro, Ann King (Notes from the Brewroom), is unable to join us this month but Dora Wagner and the students of Witten/Herdecke University have stepped elegantly into the breach, offering us their recipe for Honey, Cistus and Ginger throat lozenges (Recipe). Callum Halstead (The Plant Whisperer) has an altogether different reason for being absent from these pages. We send our heartiest congratulations and look forward to his ‘Sage Wisdom’ in coming months. Meanwhile Senga Bate sates our gardening appetites with a glimpse at life in The Globe Physic Garden.

Finally, Marianne Hughes reviews some reading material to keep us occupied as the nights darken (Book Club) and Amanda Edmiston (Botanica Fabula) prepares us for the glorious Samhain celebrations, when the clocks go back at the end of this month, with the perfect Marshmallow antidote to all that guising song.

Until then, we hope you’ll enjoy this issue’s rich, moist harvest and Maddy Mould’s beautiful illustrations.

Honorary Executive Editorial team Artistic Director Illustration Finance and Distribution

Catherine Conway-Payne Kyra Pollitt, Ella Leith Maddy Mould Maddy Mould Marianne Hughes

Herbology News is printed on FSC certified, carbon neutral, recycled paper, using non-polluting vegetable based inks, made from renewable sources.

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i: Contents

i Editorial Frontispiece Contents

Kyra Pollitt Maddy Mould

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ii Artists of the Month

Kahn & Selesnick

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iii Herb of the Month

Marianne Hughes, Hazel Brady

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iv Anthroposophical Views A Recipe for Throat Lozenges

Dora Wagner Dora Wagner and students

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v Of Weeds and Weans Flower Power

Joseph Nolan Rose Morley

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vi The Plant Whisperer The Globe Physic Garden

Callum Halstead Senga Bate

22 23

vii Jazz Ecology The Chemistry Column

Ramsey Affifi Claire Gormley

26 28

viii Our Man in the Field….

David Hughes meets David Hughes

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ix The Climate Column

Patrick Dunne

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x Foraging Through Folklore Botanica Fabula StAnza Presents…

Ella Leith Amanda Edmiston Odile Kennel

38 41 44

xi Book Club Marianne Hughes reviews The Tree Dispensary: The Uses, History and Herbalism of Native European Trees by Christina Stapley (Aeon Books: London, 2021) Woodlands for All by Anna Canning (Scottish Forestry, 2021) xii Contributors Looking Forward

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ii: Artists of the Month

Kahn & Selesnick kahnselesnick.biz Nicholas Kahn and Richard Selesnick create narrative, photographic, constructed realities, often heavily rooted in history, magic, the garden, folklore and the wild. We are delighted to have images from their forthcoming Tarot of the Drowning World gracing the pages of this Moist Issue of Herbology News.

Nicholas tells us their story: Richard and I met back in the Cretaceous period, when we were seventeen years old, in St. Louis, applying for scholarships to Washington University. We found a kinship in college and began working together informally. We were introduced to the photographic tarot deck by a visiting professor— Bea Nettles —who taught us alternative processes and who had created what I believe to be the first successful photographic tarot deck, back in the 1970s. We’ve shared an obsession for this medium ever since. As my senior college project, I created an etched 18th century narrative poker deck that told a bisexual love story. I sold a ton of hand-coloured ones to pay for travel to Europe. So, we were ahead of the trend for progressive politics in card decks by a few decades.

Now forty years on, we are still telling stories of our cyclical connection to the fertility of the land and water through uncommon media— using props and costumes and halfdrowning our friends in dark ponds to evoke Pre-Raphaelite Ophelias, dark Edens. Our current project, The Tarot of the Drowning World, is our third published card deck, our second tarot, and our first photographic one. It emerges from decades of obsession with plants and plant lore.

Both Richard and I garden. We both have British gardening mums and an attraction to cottage gardens and esoteric herbal and plant lore. My life partner— the writer, healer and herbalist Sarah Falkner —is collaborating with us on the guidebook for this deck, basing it in the tradition of ancient Herbals but with an understanding of our place on the precipice of ecological collapse. So, once again, we like using decks to address uncomfortable topics.

Our first tarot, The Carnival at the End of the World, is a watercolour illustrated deck with all the characters in elaborate folk, carnival, and mumming costumes standing on islands about to be inundated by the rising waters of climate change. The Drowning World Tarot follows similar logic.

All twenty-two cards of the major arcana are photos of the archetypal tarot characters, in period costumes, floating in black reflective water thick with blooms and leaves, fruit, frogs, and floating shells reminiscent of 17th century Dutch Still Life painting. There’s a harvest theme through the remaining fifty-six cards of the minor arcana; floating sickles, grains and flowers for swords, press-moulded biscuits for pentacles, 17th century Delft narrative blue and white ale goblets for cups, striped Indian chapati rolling pins for wands. All manner of creatures ended up in the floating floral soup that was largely staged in a purpose-built square pond created in the centre of our potager raised beds, built in the first weeks of the Covid lockdowns of March, 2020. With new plants coming into bloom in the potager and the marsh that surrounded the pond, just about every plant I grew or could gather from the wild ended up at some point floating in an ornate mandala or an Archimboldo-esque profile.

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ii: Artists of the Month

So, hidden amidst the greenery for nearly a year, the Tarot built itself— a floating guide to unlocking the mysteries of chaos and order. With the patterns of our future now so hard to read, amid the uncertainty of ecological collapse and the calamity of a plague spreading its spores across hubs of industry, the extravagant fertility of the deck offers a key to deciphering the universe.

Kahn & Selesnick hope to make the Tarot of the Drowning World available from November, via kahnselesnick.biz/store/ In the meantime, make sure to follow them on Instagram @kahnselesnick and @fledermausworkshop, and on Facebook @kahnselesnick

Cover image Page of Cups Tarot of the Drowning World Images Ten of Swords Tarot of the Drowning World Six of Cups Tarot of the Drowning World Queen of Wands Tarot of the Drowning World Three of Swords Tarot of the Drowning World Wheel of Fortune Tarot of the Drowning World Ace of Pentacles Tarot of the Drowning World Ten of Wands Tarot of the Drowning World Six of Wands Tarot of the Drowning World Four of Pentacles Tarot of the Drowning World Sun Tarot of the Drowning World

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Kahn & Selesnick Ten of Swords - Tarot of the Drowning World

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iii: Herb of the Month

Marshmallow (Althaea officinalis) Marianne Hughes, with illustration by Hazel Brady One of the loveliest words I learned in Herbology was ‘mucilaginous’. It feels like it sounds— sort of squidgy. The medicinal actions of mucilages are two-fold. Firstly, their water-soluble components can form a thin protective layer over our mucous membranes.

This acts to repel irritating substances and to reduce inflammation. Secondly, their stringy insoluble components can absorb and transport bacteria out of the body through faeces. This elimination of pathogens, cell debris and apoptotic cells (known as phagocytosis) plays an important role in promoting immunity (Wren, 1994). Research (e.g. Dawid-Pac, 2013) suggests that: The extract of the marshmallow root stimulates phagocytosis and the release of oxygen radicals and leukotrienes from the human neutrophils. Release of cytokines: interleukin-6 and tumour necrosis

factor (TNF) from monocytes, by the extract, demonstrated their potential anti-inflammatory activity.

Plants containing mucilage, then, are often effective in treating gastrointestinal illnesses, bronchitis, and coughing (Siewert, 2016).

The root of the Marshmallow (Althaea officinalis) contains 25-35% mucilage. Its moistening actions have a range of uses: it is one of the most effective, soothing demulcents for digestive tract problems; an effective herb for improving a dry mouth when saliva production is impaired; it relieves coughs by coating the oesophagus; it can protect the throat from gastric reflux; offers protection against gastric ulcers; and, applied externally, can give effective relief to skin conditions (Berry, 2019).

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iii: Herb of the Month This broad range of uses perhaps explains why Marshmallow has a long medicinal history. Recorded from the ninth century BC, it was widely used in Greek medicine (Bown, 2008). Indeed, the Greek for ‘to heal’ or ‘to cure’ is altha, reflected in the plant’s binomial Althaea officinalis. The ancient herbalist Culpeper (1616-1654) described a decoction of Marshmallow that: opens the strait passages and makes them slippery, whereby the stone may descend the more easily, and without pain, out of the reins, kidneys and bladder, and eases the pain thereof (cited in Potterton, 1985) In Poland, Marshmallow is still widely cultivated for medicinal use.

While the confectionary we call marshmallows used to contain Marshmallow root, they now consist of just sugar and gelatine. If you search hard enough, though, it is still possible to find pastilles (Pâté de Guimauve) that contain powdered Marshmallow root and are good for soothing throat infections and coughs.

References Berry, J. (2019)’ What are the benefits of marshmallow root?’, in Medical News Today (www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/32486 0, accessed 15.8.2021) Bown, D. (2008) Encyclopaedia of Herbs, Royal Horticultural Society, Dorling Kindersley: London Dawid-Pac, R. (2013) ‘Medicinal plants used in treatment of inflammatory skin diseases’, in Advances in Dermatology and Allergology, 30 (3) Potterton, D., ed. (1985) Culpeper’s Colour Herbal, Guild Publishing: London Siewert, A.M. (2016) Natural Antibiotics and Botanical Treatments, Robert Rose: Ontario Wren, R.C. (1994) Potter’s New Cyclopaedia of Botanical Drugs and Preparations, C.W. Daniel: Saffron Walden

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Kahn & Selesnick Six of Cups - Tarot of the Drowning World

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iv: Anthroposophical Views

An answer to almost everything Dora Wagner

πάντα ρεῖ Everything flows and nothing remains; there is only an eternal becoming and changing.

(Heraclitus) In the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow— Scotland's oldest public museum —there is a small glass vial, labelled `Bathybius Haeckelii’, which is the scientific name for ‘Haeckel's Slime’. Ernst Haeckel, after whom this curiosity is named, was an ardent proponent of the theory of abiogenesis— the idea that life arose from nonlife more than 3.5 billion years ago. From 1868, Haeckel, with his colleague Thomas Henry Huxley, spent many laboratory hours poring over materials dredged from depths of the ocean by the research vessel Challenger. By 1871, Haeckel was declaring that they had discovered ‘Bathybius’— or, as we might understand it —primordial slime (Haeckel,1871). Both biologists considered their benthic relic to solve several problems: since it was the evolutionary precursor for all living things, it determined the most primitive form of life, the elementary unit of cytology, the main component of marine sediments, and also handily served as a food source that explained how higher organisms were sustained in the nutrient-poor deeper reaches of the sea.

The discovery of Bathybius inspired a flurry of new research, leading to new insights and, ultimately, to the realisation of the error. So, sadly for Haeckel and Huxley, just a few years later, their theory was disproved. Belief in abiogenesis was again confined to medieval superstition, the idea of primordial slime a curious anecdote in the history of science.

Science now holds that life can never originate from lifelessness, and Bathybius is seen as an understandable error. Yet there is a legacy of sorts. Since the debunking of Haeckel’s slime, those fundamental questions on the origin of life have remained unanswered.

It’s a curious thing that, some cultural specificities notwithstanding, people from

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very diverse backgrounds, all over the world seem to find slime disgusting. This flabby stuff seems to occupy a unique, nausea-inducing, position in our imaginations. In cinemas, we are frightened by slippery, oozing, alien monsters. Slime feels greasy on our fingers and there seems to be little redeeming about it. Except for some children, we mostly loathe that something so ugly and repulsive can emanate from the depths of our being. And this might be the crux of the matter. Mucus, as a material and phenomenon, is elusive and barely visible in normal life, usually making its presence felt only in less pleasant moments— think of sniffling and reflexively inhaling. We are taught that slime is a potential source of dangerous bacteria and viruses, and can make us sick. Thus, our disgust might be a defence mechanism. So why on Earth don’t we just eliminate the creep? Simply because there hardly seems to be a living being that can exist without it. With worms, snails, and other slimy animals, as with some fungi and plants, this is obvious.

Mucilages are produced by nearly every plant and some microorganisms, and are made up of polysaccharides, which swell on contact with water to form a highly viscous, sometimes sticky, gluey, gelatine-like consistency. Mucins are found in cereal grains, but can also be found in the roots, barks, stems, leaves and seeds of higher plants, as well as in algae. As natural water-soluble swelling agents, we use them as thickeners, emulsifiers, and gels— think of jam, porridge, or lozenges. We value herbal remedies made from Coltsfoot (Tussilago farfara), Ribwort (Plantago lanceolata), Sorrel (Rumex acetosa), Marshmallow (Althaea officinalis) and Comfrey (Symphytum officinale) because of their slimy properties— for the soothing, calming, and enveloping effects they bring to the treatment

iv: Anthroposophical Views of inflammation. So, perhaps we should take a vocabulary lesson from Physics— specifically the field of rheology —which describes honey, ketchup, and blood, as ‘non-Newtonian fluids’. Described in this way, slime seems less repulsive. And that’s useful because, in the behaviour of both animate and inanimate matter, mucilaginous substances are considered extremely important boundary materials (Hall-Stoodley, 2004).

Even in Hippocrates' humoral pathology, mucus (in Greek φλέγμα, or phlégma) was understood as essential in the human body.

Hippocrates thought phlégma was produced in the brain. He attributed to it the properties of cold and dampness, and associated it with the element of water, with winter, the north, old age, the afternoon, and the moon. Like all other humours, it was considered necessary that it be in balance to maintain health.

Nowadays, we are aware that mucus appears in countless variations, and performs a variety of vital functions. Just as we are surrounded by slime before we are born, mucus is an essential protector throughout our lives. It performs as a lubricant, an adhesive, a selectively permeable protective barrier. In a nutshell: mucus holds us and our world together.

So, we have a paradox: we are disgusted by it, but we can’t live without it. Perhaps, like Heraclitus, we must deny the law of noncontradiction and accept that opposing propositions can both be true, that something

can be good and repulsive at once. In our oceans, for example, a lot of slimy substances float, slosh, wobble, tumble, and sink. Jellyfish carcasses, or the gel-like excretions of marine animals sink as flakes of marine snow to the bed, where they become colonised or consumed by microorganisms. While we might be disgusted by such squidgy waters and prefer not to swim in sea snot (even though it is not pathogenic), we admire the impressive white cliffs of Dover, which are nothing more than marine slime turned to stone. In fact, slime is one of the most extraordinary things nature has created, and the unsung hero in our lives.

Mucus coats the tissues lining all our inner organs and the cavities of our body— the mouth, nose and throat, the stomach, intestines, and urogenital system. Without it, the thin, moist tissues our inner organs would disintegrate. Roughly one billion microbes are taken into our organism every day through meals alone. Discerning which is friend, and which is foe is the supreme discipline of mucus. Consequently, our body produces more than a litre of the fluid every day. Yet these mucosal layers are unimaginably thin: depending on the organ and the situation, its thickness varies between just 200 and 500 µm.

That said, if we spread our body’s biofilms over a flat surface, they would cover about 200 square metres. For comparison, if we did the same with our skin, we’d cover only two square metres. As well as helping us to ward

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iv: Anthroposophical Views pathogens, the secretions of our mucous membranes ensure that vital substances are absorbed into our bodies, and immune responses can be blocked by specialised immune cells releasing antibodies into the mucus.

Mucus performs specific protective functions, according to the different mucous membranes inside our bodies. Mucus serves to embed the eye and lubricate movement, and to separate and transport dust and foreign bodies. The nasal secretion serves to trap dust from the air, humidify inhaled air and recover moisture from exhaled air. Saliva creates a binding site for bacteria and serves to moisten food pulp.

Gastric mucus protects against gastric acid.

The mucosa in the large intestine is the most important protective barrier for our intestinal flora, and part of the body's defence in warding off and eliminating unwanted substances and pathogens. This mechanical barrier is supported by the intestinal immune system, to which about 70 percent of our immune cells belong. Since most viruses enter the body through our mouth and nose, the mucous membranes in the mouth, throat and pharynx play an important role.

Today, mouth-nose protection, disinfectants and hygiene rules have become our constant companions. But, even if we have already been vaccinated, healthy mucous membranes are our body’s best protection against viruses, so we should support and care for them. Dry mucosa is not only unpleasant for those affected, it also indicates impairment of the cleansing and defence functions and a consequent increase in the risk of infection.

Bacteria and viruses settle more easily in dry mucosa and are more difficult to remove without secretions. In such cases, Vogel, (2020) asserts that conscious care can moisten the mucous membranes and support their reconstruction. Where the body's own mucous membranes are no longer able to protect our organism effectively, some active substances— which can be added to lozenges, for example —can act like a protective film on the mucous membranes, intensively moistening them, stimulating the

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flow of saliva and thus helping to protect the mouth and throat from dehydration. A healthy lifestyle, sufficient fluid intake, gargling with herbal essences will also be beneficial.

One of the many plants that can be of benefit is Pink Rockrose (Cystus incanus). A study investigating an herbal preparation of its aerial parts against SARS-CoV-2 in vitro found a reduction and, at certain concentrations, even an almost complete inhibition of virus growth (Träder, 2021). So, this summer, to relieve our mucous tissues of the burden of these challenging times, we prepared an appropriately sunny habitat with sand and soil and planted Rockroses in our medical herb garden. We have not yet been able to harvest enough of the plants, so we created very delicious lozenges from purchased, dried Cistus.

And on the issue of slime, I can only conclude that slime it so incredibly important for our survival that in future we'd better say 'yuck' with respect.

Images Adapted by Dora Wagner from i-stock and Wikipedia Commons References Haeckel, E. (1871) ‘On the Mechanical Theory of Life and on Spontaneous Generation’, in Nature (3): 354–356 Hall-Stoodley, L.; Costerton, J. & Stoodley, P. (2004) ‘Bacterial biofilms: from the natural environment to infectious diseases’, in Nature Reviews Microbiology (2): 95–108 Träder, J-M (2021) ‘Antivirale Eigenschaften des Extrakts aus Cistus × incanus L. Pandalis bei SARS-CoV-2 in vitro nachgewiesen’, in Erfahrungsheilkunde 70 (01):59-62 Vogel, V. (2020) ‘How to Further Reduce the Risk of Serious COVID-19 Infections: Exploiting the Fragile Viral Envelope and the Self-Cleaning Mechanisms of Our Respiratory System’, preprint article on Researchgate.

iv: Recipe

Honey, Cistus and Ginger throat lozenges A recipe created by the students of Witten/Herdecke University and Dora Wagner Ingredients For the Ginger and Cistus decoction: 3 cups of water 100g fresh Zingiber officinale (Ginger), grated 3 tablespoons dried Cistus incarnatus (Pink Rockrose) For the lozenges: ½ cup of Ginger and Cistus decoction ½ cup Coconut sugar ½ cup Honey ½ teaspoon Cream of Tartar 1 cup of iced water Method For the decoction: Place all ingredients in a saucepan and bring to a boil.

Simmer for about 8-10 minutes, then strain and reserve the liquid.

Store the liquid in a clean, sealed jar. Use the liquid to make tea, lozenges or to add to a cold drink such as soda water.

For the lozenges:  Lightly coat a 24-piece silicone mold, or an ice cube tray, with some coconut oil.  Place the decoction, Coconut sugar, Honey and Cream of Tartar in a saucepan over medium heat and stir until it comes to a gentle boil.  Once boiling, do not stir. Leave to gently boil for about 20-30 minutes.  At about 25 minutes, begin to test the mixture to see if it’s ready. You do this by dripping a small amount with a teaspoon into some iced water to see if it immediately hardens to toffee.  Continue to gently boil and test until the mixture comes to the hardened, cracking stage when dripped into the iced water. When this stage has been reached, take off the boil and pour the mixture evenly into the silicone mold.  After cooling down, place the mold in the fridge or freezer and allow to chill.  When ready, turn out the mold and store the lozenges in a glass container in the fridge, separating the layers with some baking or parchment paper to prevent from sticking

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Kahn & Selesnick Queen of Wands - Tarot of the Drowning World

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Of Weeds Weans v: v: Ofv: Weeds && Weans v:Of OfWeeds Weeds Weans &&Weans

Energetics: moist and cold, dry, and hot Joseph Nolan Every traditional medicine system of which I am aware recognises several basic qualities of diseases and remedies: moist, dry, cold, and hot. In the herbal medicine trade, we call these qualities ‘energetics’. These qualities are often ascribed to the traditional four elements of our world— water, air, earth, and fire —as well as to many esoteric and culturally-specific concepts, with all their subtleties and complications. However, the most basic components of these ideas can be very useful when choosing remedies, even at home.

In terms of symptoms, moistness and damp can be thought of as flows or fluxes in the body, like runny noses. Cold presents as a sense of coldness or chills, and usually accompanies damp— there are, of course, exceptions but if you follow the rule that most things that are damp are also cold, you won’t go far wrong. The converse is true too: heat typically accompanies dryness and can appear as the sensation of warmth in the body, or as inflammation, like a sore throat. Dryness entails a lack of fluids (dry eyes, dry mouth, dry skin, crusty noses...) and can also manifest in roughness, or a sense of tightness in the tissues.

As a rule of thumb, treat damp and cold with dry and hot, and treat dry and hot with damp and cold. Remedies for cooling and moistening are best given in water-based preparations: teas for internal use, and washes, creams, or gels for topical application. Tinctures work too, but waterbased is better, as water itself is cooling and moistening.

Heating and drying remedies may also be given in water, but they work particularly well as tinctures, as alcohol is heating and drying.

Applying these basic concepts to a few common conditions and some helpful herbs can assist us in finding the right remedy.

In children, damp conditions are more common. Childhood is the Spring of life, and Spring tends to be rather wet.

Digestive woes With bowel problems, the damp/dry distinction is viscerally illustrated. Digestive dampness— or extra water —is diarrhoea; dryness is constipation. There may be other contributory factors, and longstanding or recurrent problems should be seen to by a professional, but the occasional bout of these common and unpleasant symptoms can be dealt with using these simple energetics.

While it is necessary to remain well hydrated, using a damp remedy for a damp condition like diarrhoea will, at best, have no effect; more likely, it will exacerbate the problem.

Similarly, using a dry remedy for a constipated child— or indeed adult —is not advised.

Sometimes with constipation, simply taking in extra fluid is enough. Matricaria recutita (Chamomile) tea, with its moistening and liverencouraging properties and its anti-anxiety, anti-spasmodic effects, is an excellent choice.

When I see children presenting with constipation, Chamomile is my go-to herb, and it rarely fails. Also very helpful, and pleasant to the taste, is Glycyrrhiza glabra (Liquorice), which is gently stimulating to the liver and anti-inflammatory, improving intestinal mucus production. Soaking Linum usitatissimum (Linseeds) in a small glass of water releases a large quantity of flavourless mucilage, producing a cooling and moistening remedy. The resultant thick liquid is an excellent gentle treatment for slightly more stubborn constipation. Linseed water can be helpful in hot climates abroad or after air travel, when an unusual degree of fluid loss is compounding the problem.

To treat the trots, drying remedies are key.

Think tannin-containing, astringent Rosaceae (Rose family) plants like Agrimonia eupatoria (Agrimony), Rosa damascena (Rose, both

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v: Of Weeds & Weans petal and leaf), Filipendula ulmaria (Meadowsweet), and Potentilla ssp.

(Tormentil).

Cinnamomum zeylanicum (Cinnamon)— used to treat cholera by Mary Seacole, the Jamaican herbalist and medical heroine of the Crimean War —works equally well for less dire conditions. If there are cramps, Chamomile (which, as I say nearly every month, is a children’s panacea) will control the spasms, and it tastes nice with Cinnamon. Other herbs to reduce cramps include the aforementioned Cinnamon, Mentha ssp. (Mint), Nepeta cataria (Catnip), Foeniculum vulgare (Fennel Seed), Anethum graveolens (Dill, both seed and leaves), and a small amount of Zingiber officinale (Ginger).

The Ginger should preferably be fresh, but a Lemon and Ginger tea bag will do if that is all you have. Combining an astringent, drying remedy with one of the above herbs will help make a small person with a short-lived but miserable bout of childhood diarrhoea much more comfortable. Diving any deeper into the energetics of these aromatic medicines quickly gets complicated, so I would suggest that you simply pick herbs that your little patient will enjoy, or at the very least tolerate.

The energetics of coughs and how to treat them The damp/dry dichotomy applies to coughs as well. They can be wet and rattly, with possible soreness around the ribs, or they can be dry and barking, causing soreness in the throat. The patient might feel hot or cold, or perhaps neither. If you look up ‘coughs’ in a book of herbs, you will be faced with a lengthy list of potential cures: Chamomile again, Inula helenium (Elecampane), Marrubium vulgare (White Horehound), Sambucus nigra fructus (Elderberry), Tussilago farfara (Coltsfoot), Prunus serotina (Wild Cherry), Althea officinalis (Marshmallow), Allium sativa (Garlic), and even Capsicum minimum (Cayenne; Chilli). Why so many if they all treat the same thing? One very practical reason is seasonality: Coltsfoot is available in Spring; Garlic in Summer; Elderberry in Autumn; dried Elecampane root in Winter. But equally important, different herbs treat different coughs— so consider the characteristics of

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your wee person’s cough and act accordingly.

The basic principle is that a wet cough with a lot of mucus production is best treated with a drying expectorant remedy that is warming and spicy; a dry, irritated, and irritating cough needs moistening remedies to soothe the tissues and relieve whatever’s triggering it.

So, if little Mohammed’s cough is wet, rattly, and productive, leaving him hacking into a spittoon like an Old West gunslinger, the situation may be improved by expectorants to bring the mucus up. Warming remedies are vital to counteract that cold, damp mucus.

Garlic is great for adults, but for most children it should be administered as Garlic socks (check out my column in The Connective Issue, back in September 2020, for instructions). Alternatives to Garlic that you might have in the house include Armoracia rusticana (Horseradish) and Sinapis alba (Mustard). While some children balk at these pungent flavours, others are quite fond of them and will happily take these excellent medicines in their food. As a bonus, the pungent heat will help dispel that mucus-y full-stomached feeling one gets with a really nasty cold. But for less adventurous children, you may find these herbs helpful: Elecampane, fresh Ginger tea, White Horehound (a delicious smelling but bitter tasting member of the Mint family), and best of all, Elderberries prepared with Cinnamon, Ginger, and Syzygium aromaticum (Cloves)— spiced Elderberry syrup is really not to be missed! The warm, spicy herbs taste nice, and any that are objectionable can usually be disguised by the more pleasant Elderberry or Ginger.

If, on the other hand, the cough is dry and harsh, so that wee Fionn’s voice is croaky and strained and his throat sore, then cooling and soothing remedies are needed. Althea officinalis (Marshmallow) is perhaps your quintessentially moist herb, and it rules in this situation. It has a very pleasant mild flavour, slightly aromatic— it is easy to see why, once upon a time, sweets were made from it. With this kind of dry cough, the slimy cooling mucilage (Marshmallow’s chief constituent)

v: Of Weeds & Weans coats the throat on its way down and encourages the production of helpful mucus in the rest of the respiratory tract. If the problem is that thick, dry mucus is refusing to come up, Marshmallow may be useful in loosening it. Chamomile’s mucilage and antiinflammatory properties once again recommend it, and sweet-tasting Liquorice both reduces inflammation and increases mucus production. Coltsfoot, with its big, soft leaves, is a traditional cough remedy for children, and Verbascum thapsus (Mullein, both leaf and flower) is excellent for soothing dry, inflamed respiratory tracts. (As a side note, Mullein is also helpful for newly exsmokers who wish to help their lungs to clear and recover.) It has a mild pleasant flavour, and the yellow-orange flowers are very pretty in tea.

With either a wet or a dry cough, little patients may get those awful spasmodic coughing fits which often come at night. These can be both frightening and exhausting. One of the best herbs for this is (no surprises here) Chamomile. Its gentle but effective antispasmodic qualities really shine in this situation, and can make the difference between a bad night and a restorative one.

Marshmallow makes it better Marshmallow’s magic is due largely to the constituent mentioned above, mucilage: a large polysaccharide in the class best known as soluble fibre. Mucilage is present in Marshmallow’s big, soft, fuzzy leaves, and

prodigiously in its white, rather fluffy root. You can use either of these parts to good effect, but the root is my favourite: it contains much more mucilage, and has a lovely, mildly sweet, aromatic taste. Marshmallow is very much a water remedy. Wherever the herb has direct contact with the body’s tissues, it deposits mucilage in a viscous layer, leaving a slick protective film. Where the mucilage does not directly contact tissues, it encourages the body to produce its own mucous layer, soothing and reducing inflammation throughout. It is quite wonderful stuff, and I use mucilaginous herbs a great deal, with Marshmallow being one of my favourites. For children— and adults —in need of moisture or soothing in their guts, lungs, throats, noses, or waterworks, here is a simple, delicious, and wonderfully comforting remedy.

Cooling Marshmallow Root Infusion 1-2 heaped tbs. dried Marshmallow root pieces, or 2-3 tsp. powder 1 pint boiling water 1. Steep the herb in the water in a covered container, ideally until cold or overnight.

2. If using root, strain out the chunks and drink the liquid freely.

3. If using powder, do not strain but stir vigorously before drinking, to make sure you ingest the herbal material.

This preparation can be given to children from when they are weaned, for any kind of dry condition. It is especially helpful for dry coughs, sore throats, constipation, and the discomfort of urinary tract infections which persist while other treatments are underway.

It is also useful for helping the body hold onto and replenish lost moisture when the weather is hot or the environment dry, giving relief when skin, lips, eyes, and mouth are feeling parched.

Happy herbing.

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v: Flower Power

For what ails you Rose Morley We are all used to the idea that flower remedies help with emotional issues, not physical symptoms. Whilst Marshmallow (Althaea officinalis) can be a very powerful herb, used to treat various physical ailments— from skin issues such as eczema, to stomach ulcers, and even a tickly cough— how often do we pause to consider how these physical ailments are affecting us emotionally? I know whenever I have some skin irritation, I want to scratch it like crazy. Of course, this will make it worse— and sore —but perhaps even more damaging is that this process can make me feel frustrated and perhaps angry. A sore throat can make a person feel quite unwell, but might also prevent them being able to say what they want. That tickly cough can drive you, and everyone around you, insane.

Consider also what might make someone susceptible to a particular manifestation of ailment in the first place. Is the person with the sore throat someone who is habitually concerned about expressing themselves, someone who is timid and keeps quiet?

Perhaps that stomach ulcer is the result of stress. So, when we have physical issues in our bodies, it’s always worth looking at what’s causing them. If we treat ourselves holistically, a lot of the time we’ll be resolving the physical issue, too.

The Findhorn Flower Essences range suggests Mallow can be a great for people who need to let their creativity flow through and from the heart, to communicate clearly and in a heartfelt way: ‘I harmonise love and will. I speak and act from the heart’, as the Findhorn manual (Leigh, 2012:81) has it. Mallow essence, it suggests, was sent to Earth as a gift from the Gods— to prove they had humanity's best interests at heart.

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Most people know that flower remedies can be added to drinks or, for a more immediate effect, droppered directly onto the tongue, but few know that the essences can be used directly onto the skin to help with physical ailments. Kramer (1996) helpfully maps flower essences to different parts of the body. He cites one case study in which: a 74-year-old woman had a case of periodic bronchitis. She indicated a point on her chest where she experienced extreme pain at the slightest touch. A flower remedy was applied topically to a certain zone, after a short while the pain subsided.

You might also consider adding the essences to creams, then applying to the skin.

References Leigh, M. (2012) The Findhorn Flower Essences Handbook. Nature Spirit Publishing: Findhorn.

Kramer, D. (1996) New Bach Flower Body Maps: Treatment by Topical Application.

Healing Arts Press: Rochester, NY

Kahn & Selesnick Three of Swords - Tarot of the Drowning World

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vi: Plant Whisperer

A wee distraction Callum Halstead Our new horticultural columnist offers his apologies for the lack of advice this month, but some utterly joyous real life got slightly in the way….

We send heartiest congratulations from HNHQ to Callum and his beautiful bride, Jane.

We look forward to bringing you his first column as a married man, next month, when he’ll be lending his inimitable flair to your own green space, old or new, large or small, borrowed or blue.

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vi. The Globe Physic Garden

Autumn arrives at the little blue shed Senga Bate Wandering recently through the RBGE towards the Cottage and our Physic Gardens, I was struck by how quickly Autumn is approaching. Despite September’s glorious days, mists are now hanging over the early mornings; leaves are changing colour; swifts and swallows have taken flight to warmer climes. Suddenly, plants that were in full summer flower only yesterday (or so it seems) are rushing to set seed. Splashes of brightness remain here and there, but the apples are ripening, the days are growing shorter, and we begin to anticipate Autumn’s palette of greens, golds and reds. How quickly the year is turning.

In the Globe Physic Garden there has been ample time to sit on the bench by the Blue Shed and admire how well the plants have taken care of themselves this year. This is a favourite spot for visitors to ‘the Botanics’ who come to sit quietly, enjoying the plants and basking in any Sun that appears. As the Autumn progresses, and without a return date for our volunteers, this most delightful situation will gradually revert to nature as an

overabundance of seed falls and the roots of the Mint family run amok.

The Diploma in Herbology students worked very hard from their return to the Physic Garden in early March to ensure their herb plots would be ready for the Review Day in mid-June. This was a period of some trepidation, as the only scheduled gardening time was on Monday afternoons— not quite the freedom that students in previous, preCovid years were able to enjoy. Fortunately, over the weeks, the sun shone, and it rained just enough to coax seeds to germinate and develop into young plants within the short growing season. The Review Day, June 21st, quickly came around. Plots were tidied and interpretation was installed; all was made ready for Catherine Conway-Payne, David Pirie, and Anna Canning to gently grill the students on their chosen theme, their choice of plants, and what their horticulture journey had taught them— from seed sowing to a range of gardening techniques such as divisions, cuttings, and transplants. Students

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vi. The Globe Physic Garden

explained what biodynamic and organic practices they had used, and produced a ‘Seed to Syrup’ remedy made from one or more herbs grown from seed on their plot.

Once the assessment was over and the students were released, their plots continued to develop and thrive, and looked at their most lovely in July and August. The upsets and restrictions of the pandemic certainly didn’t stop our intrepid Diploma students— or the verdant residents of our beautiful Physic Garden.

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Kahn & Selesnick Wheel of Fortune - Tarot of the Drowning World

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vii: Jazz Ecology

The circle and the square Ramsey Affifi Pure science is an erotic pursuit. Unlike applied research, which merely aims to create and control, the pure scientist’s quest is a reaching towards mystery. It is an attraction to what is glimpsed but hidden, felt but veiled, possibly elusive, and possibly untouchable. It is filled with risk and uncertainty and yearning.

And like any erotic dynamic, its success is often deflationary. When first uncovered, scientific insights are earth-quaking— but quickly become quotidian. Who marvels much anymore that the earth revolves around the sun, or that humans are the product of evolution? Can you imagine how stunning these discoveries must have been when they first arose? The great insights science sometimes achieves are revolutionary moments of human communion with nature, moments of synchronicity— when our way of understanding meets the world. They ought to be lingered upon and revered, not shuffled into the minds of children as mere fact. What happens when schools or societies merely present the world without its startling or hidden aspects, without its fathomless depth?

What ought we do to retain and enrich the erotic potential of existence?

I ask these questions as I consider the work of plant scientists investigating the secret lives of the vegetal world. On the one hand, I am enthralled by such research and excited by where it may take us. I see it as a key of hope that might unlock the modern, anaesthetised mind to the wonder of the plant world. The plethora of books on plant intelligence, communication and behaviour certainly suggests a contemporary appetite for such insight. But I am also concerned this might be a deal with the devil. At what point have we gathered enough suggestions that the plant world is more than it appears to be? Does science need to rush in and bring every dark underside into the glare of its explicit light? Of course, plant explorations may be endless, in which case we need never worry about all these sacred question marks getting flipped on their heads. Each answer would always

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reveal new questions, and the erotic would be forever intact. Yes, perhaps everything in the universe has infinite sides to it— an insurance against the sloppy greed of reaching hands.

It would be a gift we hardly deserve.

But perhaps not.

There was only one Copernican revolution.

From that point on, progress has been about filling in details. Consider the discovery that Jupiter has moons. Fascinating to be sure, but not earth-shattering. That the sun itself spirals around the Milky Way, while still cool, does not have the same mind-bending significance as earth’s original displacement. It is a variation on a theme, as is the finding that the Milky Way is itself spinning around some even greater celestial centre. So, too, there was only one Einsteinian revolution, and one Darwinian revolution— even though people continue to discuss how spacetime works and evolution occurs. So, perhaps one day there will be no more revolutions left to be had.

Perhaps after discovering plant learning and plant communication, we will continue to debate all the bits and pieces of how it happens, but in a sense, it will all be the equivalent of finding more moons orbiting Jupiter.

I suppose I am beginning to wonder heretical things. Has the time come to ask if slowing down, or even stopping scientific research into plants might be needed? We have enough empirical data to meditate upon for decades to come. Perhaps we need to work out what kind of relationships are being asked of us given the insights gained, given the silences we can still feel, and to do more listening than quarrying. But we seem hellbent on pushing past what we have tasted rather than dwelling on it and allowing it into our minds and hearts. I have often argued that pure science is important, and been critical of what seems instrumentalising and corrupt about applied science. But would it really be all that bad if capitalism continued to claw away at pure science and succeeded in

vii: Jazz Ecology reducing all inquiry to technological research and development? If, in desecrating our capacity to uncover the glory, the churning economy accidentally protects it? I suppose the eros that drives me to pure science is the same eros that hesitates before it.

One might counter: what you say about scientific progress might be generally true, but scientific facts that point towards and make more plausible the possibility of sentience in another creature are an exception. For hundreds of years, Western science has fixated on explaining the world through identifying underlying mechanisms and regularities. As a consequence of this way of thinking filtering down into society, many people see plants as no more than very complex molecules. Beautiful perhaps, but certainly not as having any inner life. One could see the explosion of interest in plant intelligence as an attempt to culturally recover from the grip of this worldview. The surprising complexity and responsiveness that science reveals makes it again conceivable to ask questions such as: ‘What is it like to be a plant?’ In this way, science may be saving plants from the effects of former science, of lifting itself out of its own limitations. By opening up the possibility of sentience in another, science is thereby birthing an unknowability into the universe it presumes to know. Further scientific insight into plants would become more beguiling the more we catch glimpses of the previously unknown, because the sentience of another can only be inferred but not experienced directly. So, at least in this instance, science might be bringing the mist back to the mountaintops.

physics when looked at closely enough by science. Even if the organisation of the material world causes consciousness to emerge, no model of the brain leads intuitively from stuff to subjectivity. It is not clear whether neuroscience, let alone plant science, would be able to free anyone from the totalising clutch of scientific mechanism.

The only reason we are able to defer this perspective in plant science or in neuroscience is because we have not yet discovered all the mechanisms. Here, remaining question marks provide a promissory note, a space where the objective and the subjective might paradoxically coexist. But as long as science is the principle means of discovery, only objects will be pulled from that ever-diminishing pool of space.

In any case, knowledge is too cheap in our era.

We google it for a quick fix. The erotic is fragile, the mist on the mountain burned away by the sun. We run to the light in the glee of revelation, and the erotic becomes an ever more endangered experience. We must do what we can to nurture it. I suppose what I am suggesting is that human knowing should slow down and re-join the rest of the human spirit, get back into intercourse with the ecology in which it exists— which includes the heart, the body, and the world. I suppose I am suggesting we sit back and spend some time quietly with the plant world, rather than reading about it on the backs of their fallen ancestors. The meaning of recent insights needs to circle back into direct experience, so new intimacies and new questions can arise in encounter with the plant world around us.

But is this the antidote we need? I tend to think this gain is temporary and full of risk. It seems to me that intelligence, decisionmaking, communication, or behaviour revealed in plants by science invariably appears under the vice of mechanical explanations. Science cannot do otherwise. Its entire strategy is to create explanations that are reliably and physically observable. Even our brains, conscious if anything is, appear as but a dizzying network of chemistry and

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vii: The Chemistry Column

One of a kind Claire Gormley The cool, crisp days of Autumn are finally upon us, and though I’ll miss the long hours of summer sunlight, as a native New Yorker this is my favourite time of year. I know back home the Fall festivities are well underway— picking apples, carving pumpkins, and sipping hot cider beneath a canvas of bright red, yellow and orange leaves. These magnificent colours are the result of decreased production of chlorophyll; the main pigment in leaves that absorbs light and makes leaves appear green.

With fewer molecules of chlorophyll, other pigments like carotene, xanthophyll, and anthocyanins— which reflect orange, yellow and red light respectively —are unmasked and take the spotlight. The performance begins each year when the days start to shorten, and yet, differences in light, temperature, and water supply from one year to the next ensure no two Autumns are ever the same (Clatterbuck).

It’s unsurprising that an early frost is more likely to kill leaves, turning them brown and making them fall sooner from the trees.

Interestingly, a mild drought in late summer favours bright red leaves because water supply affects the accumulation of anthocyanins (Clatterbuck).

Under stress, anthocyanins accumulate to help the plant survive environmental changes. Research has

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shown that these molecules act as a filter to protect plants against excessive sunlight, and to reduce the evaporation of water from leaves (Cirillo et al, 2021). Beyond the eyecatching hue of this stress-response, the importance of water to life is clearly demonstrated. And this begs the question: what makes water so special?

Dihydrogen monoxide, better known as H2O because it contains two Hydrogen atoms and one Oxygen atom, is a polar, bent molecule.

The Oxygen atom has a higher electronegativity, meaning it attracts electrons more strongly. The Oxygen therefore pulls the electrons it shares with each Hydrogen atom closer to its nucleus, bending the shape of the molecule and creating a slightly positive region (the Hydrogens) and a slightly negative region (the Oxygen). The shape and charge of the water molecule give rise to many unique properties— like adhesion, cohesion, surface tension, high heat capacity, and so on.

Due to the unique shape and charge of water, hydrogen bonding can occur. Hydrogen bonding is a type of attraction between the Hydrogen of one molecule, and an atom from a different molecule, such as Oxygen. Though hydrogen bonds do not yield the same strength as two atoms directly bonded

vii: The Chemistry Column together, they are relatively powerful— they even bind the complementary base pairs of DNA together. Water can form up to four hydrogen bonds with surrounding water molecules, which are constantly breaking and reforming with different surrounding water molecules. This mutual attraction between water molecules causes them to stick together, a property known as cohesion. It is because of this mutual attraction that water has a high surface tension, enabling small insects to stride across the surface of a pond, allowing the creation of bubbles, and causing water to fall in droplets (Laurén, 2020).

In addition to water molecules hydrogen bonding with each other, water molecules can also make hydrogen bonds with other substances. This property is known as adhesion and is the reason water appears to creep up the sides of water glasses ever so slightly. Together, adhesion and cohesion help transport water from the roots of a plant, through the stem and up to the leaves, in a process known as transpiration (see the link below for more). Once absorbed through the roots, the water molecules form hydrogen bonds with neighbouring water molecules and the xylem tissue of the plant. As the water molecules evaporate from the leaves, the hydrogen bonds tug on the surrounding water molecules, moving them up the xylem like beads on a string.

Cohesion, surface tension, and adhesion are key to many aspects of the world around us, but life as we know it would not exist without the high heat capacity of water. Heat capacity is the amount of heat per unit mass that is needed to raise the temperature of a substance by 1C. Water has the highest heat capacity of any known liquid (4.18 joules). This is because the amount of energy needed to break the hydrogen bonds between water molecules and free a molecule is incredibly high. Having a high heat capacity enables water to absorb a lot of heat without a significant increase in temperature, thereby

minimising temperature fluctuations and creating a more stable environment for living organisms. This is one of the reasons that scientists looking for life in space, or planets for human suitable for human habitation, look for signs of water on potential planets (again, there’s a link in the references if you’d like to know more on this).

So, the next time you watch the leaves change, get caught in the rain, or wait for a pot of water to boil, I hope you remember how important water is and all the properties that make it truly one of a kind.

References and links Cirillo, V.; D’Amelia, V.; Esposito, M.; Amitrano, C.; Carillo, P.; Carputo, D., and Maggio, A. (2021) ‘Anthocyanins are key regulators of drought stress tolerance in Tobacco,’ in Biology, 10:139 Clatterbuck, W. (no date given) ‘Changing Colors of Leaves.’ University of Tennessee [pdf] accessed: 13 September 2021 at https://extension.tennessee.edu/publications /documents/sp529.pdf Laurén, S. (2020) ‘Surface tension of water – Why is it so high?’ Biolin Scientific. [online] accessed: 13 September 2021 at https://www.biolinscientific.com/blog/surface -tension-of-water-why-is-it-so-high For more on transpiration, see: https://organismalbio.biosci.gatech.edu/nutri tion-transport-and-homeostasis/planttransport-processes-i/ For more about water on potential planets, see: https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/eightingredients-life-in-space.html

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Kahn & Selesnick Ace of Pentacles - Tarot of the Drowning World

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viii: Our Man in the Field

David Hughes meets David Hughes David Hughes This month, I’m talking to myself. Some might ask what’s new in that. But cynicism aside, I’m here as a plant grower and breeder, to share some green activism, or plant physiology, or is it garden nutrition? I’m no authority, and what I’m talking about feels rather nebulous and smells god-awful, but I'm compelled to share it anyway.

Like the subject matter, much of this information has come to me organically. I've pieced together my knowledge, learned on the job over the last twenty years or so, accrued from books, gleaned from conversations, and trawled from forums as old as the internet itself. Many times, I’ve had to unlearn and relearn a lot of what I thought I knew. For example, I used to believe that success in flowering was indicated by yield, and that yield was achieved by feeding plants fertilizers: Plant eat fertilizer, plant grow big. I was led to believe that a combination of mineral fertilizers and hydroponics was THE best way to grow plants. So, I learned everything about it I could— the chemical contents of fertilizers, all the different ways you can add them to water and chemically adjust the Ph, how to aerate the mix to make it a comfy home in which plants could thrive. I learned about root boosters and flower stimulators that’ll promote freakish growth. I learned about adding artificial enzymes to the brew to break down dead and spent root matter, converting it to a form that can be taken up by the plant once again. I discovered you can add artificial growth hormones and plant growth regulators— all sorts of chemical tricks and gimmicks —to increase fruit density, weight, and size. The results were marvellous.

So, with product reviews glowing, I experimented further— toying around with various hydroponic systems; NFT tanks, Deep Water Culture, Recirculating Deep Water Culture, Ebb and Flood. I increased pump

sizes, upped tank volumes, widened pipe diameters. More air, faster flow, more m/3/s, more fertilizer. The bigger the roots, the bigger the fruits.

How naïve I was.

All these hydroponic systems have one thing in common— you clean them out. Once a week, you pump that chemical brew down the toilet and refill the system with a dilute hydrogen peroxide solution. You let that sit and then pump that down the toilet, in turn.

Then you refill the system mix in your chemical fertilizers, add artificial growth hormones, and then add harsher chemicals to adjust the pH once again. It’s disastrous for the environment— and that's before you’ve taken into account the massive environmental impact of manufacturing and shipping those fertilizers. From a global sustainability point of view, we need seriously rework our agricultural methods.

It honestly makes me shudder to think how little I used to consider the environmental damage of my gardening. Even thinking I was working organically, I spared little thought for the fact that bag of peat moss had been carved from a landscape somewhere, or that guano had been gathered from a finite resource. Just as with chemical fertilizers, the damage is terrible. A eureka moment was understanding that plants and soil feed across a spectrum that ranges from the purely organic to the entirely chemical. On one side, the self-maintained system of an old growth forest relies on the natural actions of a rich living soil to host an abundant and stable soil food web, where natural elements are cycling, and organic processes operate as if catalysed to make essential nutrients readily bioavailable for plants to uptake and thrive.

On the other, you have this sterile laboratory environment where the grower can artificially supply all the chemicals a plant will use to

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viii: Our Man in the Field bring itself through to fruition as the grower attempts a thin replication of natural organic processes. And that’s what’s really pushing me now to gather and share knowledge on sustainable gardening practices that are going to make your plants the happiest.

This knowledge comes from getting things wrong so many times that you start getting them right. Some of these methods seem utterly bonkers at first, but trial and error over the years have allowed me to develop a broad understanding of the differences between organic and synthetic feeding and how this effects plant physiology on the most fundamental level. So, what’s the difference in the overall outcome of a plant grown in each method? Well, the true difference is, ultimately, one of plant physiology and it has to do with immune response.

Firstly, then, let’s quickly recap the mechanism by which plants feed. We’re getting into hard science now, so I’ll make it as pain-free as possible: Cation exchange is the process by which root hairs break ionic bonds between positively-charged bioavailable elements in the soil and exchange them for negativelycharged Hydrogen atoms. The higher the organic clay and natural humus content of a soil, the higher its cation exchange capacity.

Thus, the more abundant bioavailable elements are to plant roots. Minerals— whether natural or chemical —are uptaken through cation exchange, then used to fuel the metabolic processes that govern

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photosynthesis happenings.

and

other

such

plant

However— unbeknownst to many gardeners —much of the energy derived from photosynthesis is not expended on plant growth. Instead, it is used to make chemicals that are subsequently secreted into the rhizosphere in the forms of sugars, carbohydrates and proteins. These chemicals are referred to as ‘exudites’ and they attract and stimulate the bacteria and fungi that make up the foundation layer of the soil food web.

This foundation layer of bacteria and fungi not only works to make natural mineral elements bioavailable in the soil but attracts a whole host of predators such as nematodes and protozoa, which in turn attract the arthropods and earthworms, which in turn attract the mammals and birds, so on and so forth up the food chain.

So, now we understand this exudite system, we can also understand that the mechanisms a plant uses to communicate with symbiotic beneficial bacteria and fungi in the soil begin to diminish the harder a grower leans into using chemical fertilizers. A symbiotic relationship with a particular strain of Endomichorazae, for example, can provide a plant with cation-free mechanisms to uptake minerals, but as artificial fertilizers become more abundant in the rhizosphere, the soil conditions become less tolerable for these beneficial fungi. The result is a slowing of the exudite system, to the point where plants will no longer release exudites to feed the soil and

viii: Our Man in the Field will instead switch entirely to uptaking synthetic elements. For want of a better explanation, the plants get lazy.

For some growers, a bacteria-free, sterile environment is exactly what they strive for, and while this offers the power of total control over plant nutrition, it comes at the cost of plant health. By negating the exudite process, and so reducing diversity in the biosphere, you will see an overall reduction in plant immune response. The more organically a plant derives its nutrition, the more aggressive its immune response will be to fighting off pest and pathogen pressures. It’s the poor immune responses of controlled plants that require the abundant use of pesticides, herbicides, and biological controls we see in commercial agriculture. By contrast, varied organic systems have been shown, time and again, to be substantially more resilient to environmental, pest and pathogen pressure.

The far-flung corners of organic gardening are fun. My journey started with swearing off bottled nutrients in favour of homemade mixes and plant juices. First it was Coconut water. For those interested: 10ml per litre of water, applied drench or foliar. Then it was Aloe Vera juice. What really spurred me on though were the Natural Farming principles of Master Cho Han Kyu, which uses dilute fermented plant juices, along with the nutrients locked up in seeds and living plant tissue, as food for the garden. If you’re familiar with making a pungent anaerobic tea by letting Comfrey (Symphytum officinale) stew in a bucket of water, then you’ve already begun to walk this path. Now my garage is buckets galore, all filled with offbeat natural matter in the process of breaking down: oyster and crab shells, beeswax, seaweed, volcanic ash— you have to be willing to experiment. I’ll even admit to the bucket of fermenting pee, though I've yet to go as far as humanure.

Dilute your teas at a ratio of 1/30, and the results are spectacular. If you want to go

further, you can aerate your teas with a fish tank pump and airstone, so they become aerobic once again. and you’re away off down another path in organic gardening. There are just so many things to try. My absolute favourite technique from Korean Natural Farming is foliar feeding sea water, again diluted at 1/30. It feels so counterintuitive, but when you think about it there are over seventy minerals in there.

Merely learning more about water and watering has been beneficial to me.

Understanding water and its movement through plant tissue is key. Imagine that every time a molecule evaporates from a leaf surface, it pulls up another water molecule from a chain that extends down through the plant to its roots. This chain of water is always moving up, between, around and through the cells like a river. Water is everything in the garden: the universal solvent. A good organic soil needs to be kept wet but not too wet, because both aerobic and anaerobic processes are taking place. Your job as a gardener is to keep this flow of water uninterrupted and filled with positive biology.

You have to join the dots between plant physiology and soil science and figure out what you can gather from your locale and then how you can break it down so it can be beneficial in your own gardening system.

Ultimately, my journey into organic gardening has changed my perspective. Now I see my pots and soil beds as ecosystems that can be fed and maintained. Lush and vigorous plant growth has become a by-product. The best bit, though, is that— correctly supported — these organic systems will get better, and more productive, year on year. ‘Take care of the pennies’, if you will, and remember that when you’re feeding, you’re really fuelling billions of organic processes at once— helping matter transform matter, supporting aerobic activity, anaerobic activity, nutrient cycling. It’s like a crazy, invisible theatre in which the plants are the critics.

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Kahn & Selesnick Ten of Wands - Tarot of the Drowning World

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ix: The Climate Column

#StopCambo Patrick Dunne Indulge me, if you will, while I recount a strange history. It will all make perfect sense by the end, I promise.

Are you sitting comfortably? Then let us begin....

Back in 1958, Fossil Fuel Companies researched their own impact on the climate and then buried the report (Pattee, 2021).

In 2015, it was revealed that Fossil Fuel Companies had known about climate change and their impact on it, and they were exposed for funding decades of misinformation to protect their profits whilst knowingly destroying communities and ecosystems across the globe (Hall, 2015).

In May 2019, following decades of campaigns by communities around the world and more recent mass public protests in Western cities, the UK Government declares 'Climate Emergency,' the first such declaration by a leading economy.

By 2020, the International Energy Agency is warning that no new oil or gas fields should be developed, if global warming is to be limited to 1.5C. Yet, in June 2021, both Shell and Siccar Point Energy apply for approval of plans to develop the Cambo heavy oil field, off the Shetland coast— a field that contains an estimated 800 million barrels of oil (Bol, 2021).

In August 2021, the Scottish Government avoid giving an opinion on whether Cambo oil extraction should go ahead, instead passing responsibility to the UK government, who allocate it to the Oil and Gas Authority— part of the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS)— declaring that they will decide whether to approve or reject the plans.

In September 2021, media outlets begin publishing interviews with oil magnates and 'industry experts,' (i.e. fossil fuel companies) arguing that opening a new oil field would, in fact, help the UK fulfil its Paris Agreement commitments and would, in fact, be consistent with the UK Government’s position as a global climate leader. Meeting UK energy

needs from a British field, they suggest, will be cleaner than importing ‘dirty’ energy from abroad.

(The casual racism is only one of the things wrong with this picture).

In November 2021, in Glasgow, the UK Government will host COP26— the most important climate talks in history.

So, what do you think of the story? Good, in a sort of completely crazy, tear-your-hair-out, scream and cry, and plan a post-apocalyptic future kind of way?

The climate emergency, the narrative around it (in much of the media, at least) and, consequently, our response to it, is— and always has been —driven by the same companies, in the same industry that created the crisis. This is something they know themselves, and have known longer than almost anyone. It is a fact they have been exposed for actively denying over the course of decades. What’s more, this narrative is something that is still maintained— through billions of pounds-worth of PR, funding for think tanks, payments to policy advisers, advertising, greenwashing, astroturfing...

So, here we are. A new oil field is being touted as part of the solution to the intersecting global crises caused by too many oil fields, corporate greed, and financial colonialism.

Of course, the story is unfinished, the timeline incomplete. There are many more revelations to come— studies of climate change and the burning of fossil fuels, exposés of the political and financial calculations necessary to carrying out business and ignoring the disaster scheduled for some time in the 21st century. Now, as it turns out.

As I write, on the 8th of September, the temperature in Edinburgh is more than ten degrees above the average for this time of year in Scotland. Over in New York this month, more than forty people died when hurricane

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ix: The Climate Column Ida hit. The National Weather Service issued its first ever emergency warnings for flash floods in both New York and New Jersey.

Large swathes of Louisiana were left without power. July was Earth’s hottest month on record (NOAA, 2021). Madagascar is experiencing drought and is threatened with climate-induced famine (Harding, 2021).

Despite these global catastrophes, our government, and the oil and gas industry, are still making plans for expansion and full recovery of assets in the North Sea and elsewhere. As Penman (2021) points out, 'it’s not just Cambo. If you look beyond that we’ve got Rosebank in 2023 and Clair South potentially coming after that.' Arctic drilling, anyone?

In a BBC article (Keane, 2021), oil tycoon Sir Ian Wood argues that stopping our extraction capacity would do nothing to reduce our demand. This, of course, is true. But this argument simply begs the questions when and how we as a nation— and, more widely, the global north —are going to meaningfully reduce our demand for cheap and easily accessed energy. It is our addiction to cheap energy and other commodities that is driving so much over-consumption of the Earth.

Remember that when you are encouraged to point the finger at China and distracted from focussing on our own historical responsibility and per capita emissions. The suggestion that our energy is somehow 'cleaner' than that drilled and extracted in other parts of the world is, in most cases, an extraordinary and pernicious claim. It seeks to draw a distinction between two dirty and destructive practices, to claim that one is better than the other, and carries more than a hint of the colonial attitudes and underlying racism that are still used to justify our excesses in the face of the indignities suffered in other parts of the world as a consequence. But that’s, perhaps, a topic worthy of another whole column.

The hard truth is that most the world’s currently identified oil and gas assets will need to remain in the ground if we are to have any hope of keeping global average warming below 2 degrees, let alone close to 1.5.

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(Carrington, 202) But that will entail the world’s wealthiest, most powerful corporations, banks and investment conglomerates writing off vast— VAST — amounts of wealth. We’re talking trillions of pounds (ibid.). Yes, that will require an almost unimaginable change to the global economy, but the alternative is continued global heating and climate impacts on a scale beyond anything we have seen thus far. This is an opportunity for us to reimagine and transform how we do economics, debt, investment, growth and money. It is going to be the single most important process in economic history.

And it is vital.

So, Cambo. A proposed new oil field in UK waters. No one prepared to step up and take responsibility to cancel the plan, to commit to a new infrastructure that doesn’t feature fossil fuels. A narrative that tries to persuade us that this development will, in fact, help us solve the climate emergency (Garton-Crosby, 2021).

The situation is absurd, and we simply mustn't stand for it. So how do we stop it? I'm glad you asked. Some of the darker aspects of the Cambo issue have already been made public, and a wide campaign of events, rallies, legal challenges, and petitions is taking shape. All of them need you. Join upcoming campaigns, write to your MP, rally, share, march, and shout. Get involved in whatever capacity you can. This is one of those moments.

We know what is at stake. The government and the oil industry know what is at stake.

They claim to want to avert the climate crisis, but they are still driving through the infrastructure that will add to the crisis we are experiencing, right across the world, right now.

It's time to #StopCambo References Bol, D. (2021) ‘Cambo oil field: UK Government told to reject Shell’s Shetland plans’, article in The Herald. 13th July.

Accessed via www.heraldscotland.com/politics/19439889.c ambo-oil-field-uk-government-told-rejectshells-shetland-plans

Kahn & Selesnick Six of Wands - Tarot of the Drowning World

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x: Foraging through Folklore

Of marshes and meddling Ella Leith Marshes have a reputation as mysterious, liminal, and potentially dangerous. Neither solid land nor true river, a single misplaced foot might send you floundering in deep water. But the danger lies not just in the water itself, but from the damp air in ‘fever-haunted marshes and ague-infested lowlands’ giving rise to aches, pains and diseases (Balfour 1891:145). So, it’s hardly surprising that a rich tradition of folk medicine can be found in wetland areas like East Anglia, the Lincolnshire Carrs and the Essex marshes (Newman 1945a:350). Many remedies drew on local herbs, including Marshmallow (Althaea officinalis), Water Mint (Mentha aquatica), Pennyroyal (Mentha pulegium), Water Horehound (Lycopus spp.) and Mullein (Verbascura thapsus). Other remedies involved more obscure items and symbolic rituals: a potato in the pocket will help with rheumatism; going to ‘meet the incoming tide [i]s a cure for whooping-cough— as the tide ebbs the cough is carried away’; and swallowing spiders is a cure for ‘the ague’— known to us as indigenous malaria (Newman, 1945a:357-8).

The ague was particularly deadly for those who had not been brought up in the marshlands— a fact which some nefarious fenland men used to their advantage.

According to the eighteenth-century writer Daniel Defoe, in the Essex marshes it was ‘very frequent to meet with Men that had had from five or six, to fourteen or fifteen wives’, and that a man from ‘this damp part of the world’ had boasted that men such as he went ‘into

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the Uplands for a [wealthy] Wife’ in order to make their fortune several times over: When they took the young Lasses out of the wholesome and fresh air, they were healthy, fresh, and clear, and well; but when they came out of their native Air into the Marshes among the Fogs and Damps, there they presently chang’d their Complexion, got an Ague or two, and seldom held it above half a Year, or a Year at most; and then, said he, we go to the Uplands again, and fetch another.

(1724:14) One local man was reputed to be on his thirtyfifth wife at the time of Defoe’s visit.

There is much to fear in the marshes, then— the deep water, the treacherous ground, the diseased insects in the rheumatic mists, the motivations of your potential husband... and, of course, the supernatural creatures. Some of these spread diseases themselves. Water-elf disease, recorded in an Old English ‘leech book’, caused the patient’s fingernails to discolour and their eyes to become watery and downcast; the treatment was to steep nineteen different herbs (including Marshmallow) in ale and holy water and to sing a charm asking that the disease ‘will pain you no more than it pains the land by the sea’ (Grendon, 1909:195).

According to Grendon, ‘widely prevalent among Germanic peoples was a belief in the virtues and sanctity of running water ... each

x: Foraging through Folklore brook, river, and stream was supposedly haunted by a spirit, who might be helpful or harmful’ (1909:120). These thousand-year-old beliefs continued, in some form, well into the modern era. Ethel Rudkin, writing in 1955 in the Lincolnshire marshes, claimed that, until recently, ‘tiny folk peopled the boggy land near the Ancholme River, and they were known as the Strangers; sometimes they were called the Tiddy People, because they weren't even as big as a new-born baby; or the Greencoaties, from their green jackets; or perhaps the Yarthkin (Earthkin) since they dwelt in the moulds’ (1955:393). The Strangers might cause banal mischief, but if left alone they harmed no one— unlike the other, more famous supernatural marsh inhabitant, the Will-o-the-Wisp. The strange ethereal lights spotted in marshlands are now usually attributed to the spontaneous combustion of tiny quantities of flammable gases, but they have been considered supernatural in various traditions across the world. They are often associated with death: some alternative names include Corpse Candles; the ‘dancing souls of little children’ (Hausman and Hall, 1958:128); Jack-oLanterns (not to be confused with the pumpkin-head lanterns) which were thought to be ‘the souls of unbaptized children, doomed to wander until Judgement Day’ and ‘guide this year's ghosts to their funeral service on Hallowe'en’ (Palmer, 1972:244).

Most often, though, these lights were believed to be marsh imps or goblins carrying lanterns and were known as Will-o-the-Wisp, Willie Wisp or Will-o-the-Wyke. As one woman from Islay described them: Will-o'-the-Wisp is a very bad thing. It just appears for the purpose of leading people astray and bringing them to their end. There was a man who was out at night, and he saw a Will-o'-the-Wisp going before him.

He thought it was a light from a house, and he made for it. When he would reach where he thought it had been, he would find it as far away before him as ever. It cheated him in that way for a long time, and the next

day he was found dead in a peat bank (in Maclagan, 1897:222).

In East Anglia, a similar ‘fire-fiend’— called the Lantern Man —could be called up by a whistle. Just in case, if you ever inadvertently whistle in a bog, ‘the proper method of protection is to lie face downwards on the ground with the mouth buried in mud, so that the apparition will pass over the prostrate body’ (Newman, 1945b:292).

The marshes are teeming with other supernatural beings— water-wives, dead hands without arms, boggarts, spunkies, todlowries, witches... Indeed, as one of Lincolnshire folklorist M. C. Balfour’s informants said of the boglands of the Carrs, ‘my word! 'twor a stra-ange an' ill place to be in ... whiles syne, afore tha dykes wor made’ (1891:149).

The aforementioned dykes were part of the large-scale drainage and land reclamation that changed many of England’s marshlands.

In the seventeenth-century, Dutch engineers were brought in to apply their time-honoured methods of water control and, by the late nineteenth-century, it had ‘been so widely carried out, that ... the great marshes have been almost entirely reclaimed, and many hundreds of useless acres are now turned into fertile farm-lands’ (Balfour, 1891:145). Whilst this may have been of benefit to agricultural productivity, in the Carrs this change to the eco-system upset the delicate folkloric balance between the local people and Tiddy Mun. Tiddy Mun, or Little Man, was ‘a fertility spirit associated with the water level of the fens’ (Briggs, 1976:395): ‘While the watter teems the fen / Tiddy Mun’ll harm nane’, went a traditional rhyme (Rudkin, 1955:395). He lived in the waters, coming out only when the evening mists rose: Then he came creeping out in the darklins, limpelty lobelty, ... he was like a dearie wee old grandfather with long white hair and a long white beard, all cotted together and tangled; gowned in grey, he could scarce be seen through the thick mist; and he came with the sound of

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x: Foraging through Folklore running water and a sough of wind, laughing like a pyewipe [lapwing] screech. (ibid.)

In rainy weather, when water flooded the paths and rose up even to the houses’ front steps, families would go out on the night of the first new moon and stand at the edge of the bog, calling: ‘Tiddy Mun wi'out a na'ame / The watter's thruff!’ Only once they heard a lapwing-like screech could they go home, safe in the knowledge that Tiddy Mun would bring the water level down for them.

But that was ‘afore tha dykes wor made’, and as soon as the water level was messed with, the local people knew that Tiddy Mun ‘wor sore fratched wi iverybody’: For soon tha coos pined, tha pigs starved, an' tha pownies went lame; tha brats took sick, tha lambs dwined, tha creed meal brunt 'issen, an' tha new milk craddled; tha thatch fell in, an' tha walls burst out, an' all an' anders went arsy-varsy. (Balfour 1891:153) Darwin Horn argues that this list of ailments caused by the angry Tiddy Mun are, in fact, ‘a list of conditions to be expected in the aftermath of land drainage on a regional scale’ (1987:11). Animals would have suffered from changes in diet and patterns of disease, as well as discomfort underfoot: ‘as the watertable lowers, the ground surface often forms a hard crust. Ponies accustomed to walking on the soft, springy ground ... may be expected to develop sore feet and lameness’ (p.11). The structural integrity of buildings would be affected by the rapid compaction of the drained soil, sometimes lowering the ground surface by as much as 4’9”, causing ‘severe settling, and perhaps the collapse of structures, particularly during the first few years following reclamation when shrinkage occurs at its most rapid rate’ (p.11).

For humans, draining the marshes also affects the quality of the drinking water: That aquatic vegetation controls disease is demonstrated by ... experiments in using artificial marshes to purify waste water. It has been

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found that marsh vegetation is able to purify prodigious amounts of faecal material and to significantly reduce the presence of bacteria and other pathogens. (p.14) Additionally, an upsurge in biting insects and instances of malarial fevers is likely to occur, due to the destruction of their predators’ habitat (p.12). This may be a timely reminder.

Amid concerns that indigenous malaria will return to Britain with the escalation of humaninduced global warming (Chin and Welsby, 2004), perhaps marshes are not as unhealthy as their reputation suggests— it is people meddling with them that makes them so.

When it comes to the delicate balance of biodiverse ecosystems, Balfour’s informant should have the last word: ‘as tha sayin' is, bad's bad, but meddlins wuss’ (1891:150).

References Balfour, M. (1891) ‘Legends of the Cars’, Folklore, 2(2):145-170 Briggs, K. (1976) An Encyclopedia of Fairies, New York, Pantheon Books Chin, T. and Welsby, P. (2004) ‘Malaria in the UK: past, present, and future’, Postgraduate Medical Journal, 80: 663-666 Defoe, D. (1724) A Tour Thro' the Whole Island of Great Britain, Volume 1, London, available at openlibrary.org Grendon, F. (1909) ‘The Anglo-Saxon Charms’, The Journal of American Folklore, 22(84):105-237 Hausman, L. and Hall, J. (1958) ‘Will-o'-theWisp’. Western Folklore, 17(2):128-129 Horn, D. (1987) ‘Tiddy Mun's Curse and the Ecological Consequences of Land Reclamation’, Folklore, 98(1):11-15 Maclagan, R. (1897) ‘Ghost Lights of the West Highlands’, Folklore, 8(3):203-256 Newman, L. (1945a) ‘Some Notes on Folk Medicine in the Eastern Counties’, Folklore, 56(4):349-360 Newman, L. (1945b) ‘Some Notes on the Folklore of Cambridgeshire and the Eastern Counties’, Folklore, 56(3): 287-293 Palmer, K. (1972) ‘Punkies’, Folklore, 83(3):240-244 Rudkin, E. (1955) ‘Folklore of Lincolnshire’, Folklore, 66(4):385-400

x: Botanica Fabula

Gothic guising goodies Amanda Edmiston The air has developed a damp, chill quality, scented with fairy-ring fungi and slowly disintegrating leaves. There is an element of grief lingering somewhere in the mists, a sadness that summer has passed. Our bodies often embrace the moist descent of this transition by producing a slippery layer of mucus. Our taste buds yearn for heat and sweetness; warm squash soups, gingerscented parkin, hot chocolate laced with gooey marshmallows. We start to hanker for bright shining lights and warm hearths. We start craving mischief.

As Hallowe'en or Samhain approaches, the walls between worlds are growing thin and we sense otherworldly things. Turnip lanterns are carved, children construct costumes— (dis)guises —practise their 'turns' to share round the doors, and our youngest decides she ‘must’ be an ancient Egyptian mummy this year…

As she grows hoarse from singing her guising song, I take the Marshmallow root (Althaea officinalis) from the cupboard and mix her a gloopy cupful of warm Mallow root, sweetened with honey. Cajoling her to drink with tales of how the gelatin-based sweets she loves originate from Ancient Egypt and were also originally created with Mallow root and honey, she peers at the drink suspiciously.

Then she shrugs and takes a sip. A bandage unravels. Pulling the end free, she starts to rewind it and announces she needs more Hallowe'en stories about the sweeties she's hoping to gather from the neighbours when the time comes. As stories seem to be helping

the medicine go down, I riffle through my tales of Chocolate (Theobroma cacao) stolen from Mayan gods, of the Coltsfoot (Tussilago farfara) of cough candy appearing from the underworld...but decide to settle instead for a cautionary tale— one that may hold the wholesale consumption of all goodies gathered on the night at least somewhat in check…

Like Marshmallows, mints have been hugely popular for a long time. So popular, in fact, that during Queen Victoria’s reign whole market stalls were devoted to the humble, tasty humbug. And so, a lot of time was spent cooking up minty sweets, but the price of some of the ingredients meant that the use of one particular 'extra' became commonplace.

This secret ingredient was a cheap bulking agent from the local chemists, something known as ‘daft’, and daft it was: Plaster of Paris, Gypsum, powdered limestone... anything cheap that would make the good stuff go the extra mile.

The confectioner in our story, this dark October night, had an order from a local market stallholder known as Humbug Billy.

Humbug Billy was one of his best customers, in fact. But being busy this particular night, the confectioner sent his assistant up to the chemist’s for a pound or so of daft.

Unfortunately, this assistant found the chemist had a new apprentice, a young man who didn't know what any of the substances in any of the containers in the stockroom were. Too proud to admit his ignorance, he hazarded a

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x: Botanica Fabula guess and shoveled up twelve pounds of lovely, soft, white, powdery arsenic. (The chemist, priding himself on knowing his stock, kept the arsenic unmarked, to be used for rat poison).

The apprentice popped the arsenic into a bag and sold it to the confectioner’s lad to add to the mints. The daft/arsenic was promptly mixed in with the sugar, gum and peppermint extract, set into lozenges and sent off to Humbug Billy, king of the market stall.

Now, Billy was rather fond of a mint himself and so, very quickly after taking delivery of this latest supply of humbugs, Billy was taken ill.

But the drama didn’t stop there. As the old gent was sent to his bed, Billy’s apprentice was prevailed upon to help out. He took to the market stall determined to prove he could outsell old Bill— and sell he did. That day, the humbugs proved very popular with train travellers, and soon almost all the mints had gone their merry way.

When the poison was discovered, there was no way of putting out word. In the end at least twenty people died, and over 200 were taken seriously ill.

The moral? Don’t swallow anything unless you know exactly what it is.

Still, it’s probably not going to put my youngest off guising. Quite rightly, she just laughed and fastened her bandages, reassured by her older sister that laws were now in place to prevent such mishaps.

But maybe a scary sweetie story or two will add another layer of mischief to this strange time of year.

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References Amanda's version of the true story of Humbug Billy, the accidental Bradford poisoner, is adapted from the account recorded in: Holloway, S. W. F. (1991).

Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain 1841– 1991: A Political and Social History. London: Pharmaceutical Press Amanda's latest performance piece, Handing On— co-created with her mum, storyteller Jean Edmiston —will feature at The Scottish International Storytelling Festival, in Edinburgh, this month.

Kahn & Selesnick Four of Pentacles – Tarot of the Drowning World

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x: StAnza Presents…

Odile Kennel why don’t you write something erotic (j’ai cessé de contempler l’astre) I am the ripe fruit which bursts and didn’t know that it was ripe. Swell. Slam. Split.

Drips: juice and juiciness! Runs down your chin, stains your shirt! Bite into the fig, feast on strawberries, pluck, pluck apart pomegranates. I have 613 seeds and no commandments. I’ll be right behind you. I feel fluttery, flex my feelers, run on the whistle, run out.

As in all poems of desire, the skin smacks, bangs, screws into swelling flesh, stretches to a zone. Geo zone, time zone, what else?

Fruit de mer too demands its moist place in such a poem, such a poem must name oysters, expose pearls, salty brine and the stimulating properties of protein . . . oh limbus, oh seamdream, this poem necessarily remains a fragment, merely whispers, sighs, trickles, gets lost, gets drunk, etc

Odile Kennel, tr. Annie Rutherford Odile Kennel lives in Berlin and works as an author and poetry translator from French, Portuguese, Spanish and English. She has received numerous scholarships and was nominated for the Alfred Döblin Prize in 2015. She has writes both prose and poetry, and her most recent publication was the collection Hors Texte in 2019.

StAnza brings poetry to audiences and enables encounters with poetry through events and projects in Scotland and beyond, especially their annual spring festival in St Andrews. www.stanzapoetry.org

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Facebook: stanzapoetry

Instagram: @stanzapoetry

Kahn & Selesnick Sun – Tarot of the Drowning World

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xi: Book Club

The Tree Dispensary: The Uses, History and Herbalism of Native European Trees (Stapley, C.; Aeon Books, 2021) Reviewer: Marianne Hughes Perhaps many of us begin our journey into herbal medicine through familiarity with annuals and perennial shrubs. It wasn’t until I read Peter Conway’s Tree Medicine (2001) that my eyes were opened more widely to the extent of the medicinal natural world. And it was during her training as a herbalist that Christina Stapley found herself searching for an in-depth book on tree medicine. In writing her own book on the subject, she was seeking to answer questions asked during the guided tree walks she ran, as well as the interest people showed in her popular day course, The A-Z of Medicinal Trees.

The book is organised according to the four seasons, and covers thirty trees in total, with a few shrubs included for good measure— such as Rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis) and Sea Buckthorn (Hippophae rhamnoides). The book is very readable, and thoroughly referenced. Stapley acknowledges her archivist father‘s influence, and it is clear his lessons on the importance of original source material were not in vain.

The entry for each tree is accompanied by beautiful photographs and tips on recognising and getting to know the tree, with comments on its usefulness, and notes on possible dangers (from and to the tree). Stapley also provides a detailed history of each tree’s medicinal use, including historical recipes, and gives herbalists’ references detailing parts used, dosage and form, and constituents and actions.

The entry for Quince (Cydonia vulgaris), for example, provides a range of recipes and medicinal uses for the fruits and the seeds, referencing sources from 1540 onwards. The entry for Rowan (Sorbus aucuparia) includes a note on the Latin suffix ‘aucuparia’, meaning ‘bird-catching’ as a mixture of Rowan berries and Birch sap (Betula pendula) was used to make bird lime, which was smeared onto trees

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to

catch birds (fortunately, not in Scotland). And did you know that there is an International Sea Buckthorn Association, or that Genghis Khan’s success is said to have stemmed from his habit of feeding his horses on Sea Buckthorn berries?

For herbalists, one drawback of the book might be that the index does not include medical ailments so that it could be used, say, to find a tree medicine to treat respiratory conditions. I was disappointed to note that the book does not appear to have been printed on recycled paper. Overall, however, this book is likely to prove a very welcome addition to your herbal medicine library— useful to anyone wishing to grow native trees with medicinal uses, anyone interested in the constituents and uses of tree medicine, and anyone studying the breadth and history of herbal tree medicine.

xi: Book Club

Woodlands for All (Canning, A.; Scottish Forestry, 2021) Reviewer: Marianne Hughes Strictly speaking this is not a book, but a small booklet of 32 pages, available to download from Scottish Forestry (www.forestry.gov.scot/engagement).

Alongside Natalie Taylor’s lovely illustrations, the text traces connections between fifteen medicinal woodland plants that grow in Scotland— including Rosebay Willowherb (Epilobium angustfolium), Rowan (Sorbus aucuparia), and Nettle (Urtica dioica) —and the many other countries in which these plants are found, giving both current and historical uses for each.

Gaining insight from the names of these plants and their meanings in Arabic, Chinese, Urdu, Russian, Polish, Turkish, German, and Romanian makes for a rich diet and, just as Scotland is itself a celebration of multi-ethnic histories, this little booklet highlights how plants travel and provide medicine across many countries, regardless of borders.

Seeking Reviewers Are you reading something you would recommend to others?

We’re always interested in reviews of books to share with fellow herbal folk.

Please simply send us a review, or get in touch: herbologynews@gmail.com

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xii: Contributors

Ramsey Affifi is Lecturer in Science (Biology) Education and Environmental Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh. http://ramseyaffifi.org

Senga Bate started her RBGE Herbology journey around 2007, at first attending evening classes, then any and all classes offered

by Catherine Conway-Payne, and eventually graduating from the Dip. Herbology in 2015. Since 2016/7 Senga has tutored in herb horticulture on both the attended and blended RBGE Diplomas.

She has been a volunteer in the Physic Garden areas in RGBE since 2013. A huge advocate for kitchen pharmacy, she uses herbs, spices, mushrooms, wild plants, and sea vegetables as daily preventative medicine.

Hazel Brady’s background is in IT, but she has always loved plants and since retiring has expanded her knowledge, especially around herbs. She completed the Diploma in Herbology at RBGE under Catherine Conway-Payne. Retirement has also given her the opportunity to develop another of her interests— an artistic practice centred in drawing and painting.

Patrick Dunne is an Edinburgh-based community gardener.

Since 2018 he has, with his partner Katie Smith, co-organised an International Fringe event staging readings of the 2018 IPCC 1.5 Degrees Global Warming report, made lots of flat sourdough bread and camped, marched and organised as an occasional environmental activist.

Amanda Edmiston was raised in stories; her mother is a professional storyteller, her dad was a toymaker, her grandfather a sculptor, her gran a repository of traditional remedies and folklore.

After studying law, then herbal medicine, Amanda began to blend facts, folklore, traditional tales, history and herbal remedies into unique works. Based in rural Stirlingshire, you can follow her on Facebook, @HerbalStorytell, and find more of her works at www.botanicafabula.co.uk

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viii: Contributors

Claire Gormley is a graduate of Moray House School of Education and teaches biology and chemistry in Edinburgh. She earned an undergraduate degree in Biotechnology from James Madison University in 2017, and a MSc in Science Communication and Public Engagement from the University of Edinburgh in 2019. Claire is passionate about building positive relationships between communities and Science through education and engagement.

David Hughes is an organic gardener, fruit and veg enthusiast, plant nutritionist, terpine whisperer, seed collector, green librarian and half decent in the kitchen. Most often found disturbing the peace in the woods of East Lothian, or more occasionally wandering in unimproved pastures looking quizzically at things, David looks to explore landscapes, people and their relationships with the plants that surround them by examining the esoteric sides of herbology through conversation, experience and silly wee stories.

Marianne Hughes began following her interest in complementary medicine after a career in Social Work Education and voluntary work in Fair Trade. Starting with Reflexology & Reiki, she progressed into Herbal Medicine. The evening classes at the RBGE got her hooked and she completed the Certificate in Herbology and, more recently, the Diploma in Herbology. Her current joy is experimenting with herb-growing in her own garden, in a local park, and alongside other volunteers in the RBGE Physic Garden. marianne@commonfuture.co.uk

Dr. Ella Leith is an ethnologist and folklorist who studied in Scotland and now lives in Malta. She particularly loves folktales and the storytelling traditions of linguistic and cultural minorities. IG: @leithyface

Rose Morley qualified as a Bach Flower Registered Practitioner in February 2017, after studying the system for over two years. It was her longstanding, keen interest in alternative medicine, and her passion for flower remedies in particular, that led Rose to obtain Bach Foundation International Register (BFRP) Practitioner status. rose.morley@hotmail.co.uk

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xii: Contributors

Maddy Mould is an illustrator living in the Scottish Borders. Her work is heavily influenced by the magic of the surrounding natural landscape.

IG: @maddymould and www.maddymould.co.uk

Joseph Nolan practices Herbal Medicine in Edinburgh and specialises in men’s health and paediatrics. He is a member of the Association of Foragers, and teaches classes and workshops related to herbal medicine making, wild plants, foraging, and natural health. You can find him on Facebook and Instagram @herbalmedicineman, and on his website: www.herbalmedicineman.com

Kyra Pollitt is a graduate of the Diploma in Herbology at the RBGE. When not editing Herbology News, she works as a translator, interpreter, writer and artist. She lives on the Isle of Harris, where she is busily planting and growing a garden. www.actsoftranslation.com and www.wilderorb.com

Dora Wagner is a graduate of the RBGE Diploma in Herbology, and a Didactician in Natural Science. She also works as a Naturopath for Psychotherapy, and as a Horticultural Therapist. She currently lectures in Medical Herbalism at the University of Witten/Herdecke, and is leading a project reconstructing the medicinal herb garden of an Anthroposophic Hospital in Germany. dora.wagner@t-online.de and www.plantadora.de

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xii: Looking Forward

11//21: The Time Issue

If you’ve enjoyed these pages, be sure to catch our November issue, featuring:    

Your favourite columnists Plus, our new horticultural column, ‘Sage Advice’, from expert gardener, Callum Halstead Plus, Herb of the Month: the Gingko tree (Gingko biloba) Plus, we focus on memory

And more….

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