Botany

Posted by Violet Snow

When you harvest above-ground plant parts for making tea, make sure they are free from rain and dew, since moisture will encourage mold formation mold during drying. The ideal time to harvest is late morning, when the dew has dried, and the sun has not yet baked out nutrients. (However, later in the day is better than not harvesting at all!)

Collect your plants in a paper bag or basket and then find a place out of the sun to dry them. If the plant has long stems, you can assemble a bunch and tie the stems together near the base, using string or a rubber band. Make sure the bunch is loose enough to allow circulation of air through the leaves, and hang it from a hook or nail.

Individual leaves or flowers may be placed on a paper towel or in a basket. Some people build screens with frames and place them on boards or bricks. My favorite set-up is a basket on top of the refrigerator, where the rising heat accelerates drying. I stir the plants once a day to make sure air gets at all the parts. Drying time will vary with humidity.

Check your plants daily by bending several leaves to see if they crack, the indication that they are dry. Once they are dry, store them immediately in a paper bag or jar. The stems may take longer to dry, in which case it’s best to strip off the leaves when they are dry. The stems may also be used for tea.

Roots should be brushed free of dirt, sliced, and given two weeks to dry. It’s best to finish off roots in an oven on very low heat for half an hour with the oven door left open.

Posted by Violet Snow

Shaped like miniature fleurs-de-lis, these scales come from the conelike “fruits” or seed heads of any of the various species of birches, such as paper, sweet, silver, river, gray. Each scale has a miniscule seed attached. However, by the time you find the scale, the seed may have been eaten by a squirrel, which may also have been responsible for scattering the scales.



Birches have both male and female flowers in spring. The female flowers are tiny and greenish, in short, upright “catkins”, or narrow, dense chains. The male flowers are tiny and yellowish, hanging in longer catkins near the ends of the twigs. The catkins, fluffy with flowering, make a graceful sight among the birch branches for just a few weeks.



After the female flowers are pollinated, they develop into seeds, and the upright catkins turn into the little conelike clusters of scales that remain on the trees through the winter. Like leaf buds, male catkins form in summer and also stay on the trees in the winter, in a partially developed form, awaiting the next spring’s flowering.



Alders are closely related to birches and also have male catkins and female cones that can be found in winter. The cones are slightly different, with hard, woody scales, not so easily plucked and scattered as those of birches. The catkins are tight, shiny, and reddish-brown.



Knowing the catkins and cones of birches and alders can be a great help in learning to identify these species. They are also aesthetically beautiful and add pleasure to a winter hike in the woods.

See also Identifying Trees in Winter and Birches White, Sweet, and Silver.

Posted by Violet Snow

Occasionally we list a number of items found in the wild and discussed in recent Botany columns, for you to go out and find for yourself. You are invited to post a description of something you observed or learned on your hunt – see the Scavenger Hunt Discussion.

For the December 2007 scavenger hunt, go outdoors and seek the following items:

• Three plant skeletons

The dried-out seed-bearing stalks of plants are many and various in winter. Look around the base of each skeleton and see if there are any green leaves. A few plants stay green in winter, and some of them are actually edible. See Edible Green Plants of Winter.

• A tree with seed pods hanging from the branches

Some trees form seeds late in the year and keep them throughout the winter, such as catalpa, sycamore, witch hazel, tulip tree, black locust, and others. See Identifying Trees in Winter for details.

• A tree with opposite twigs and buds

You can either look at low branches or look up into the canopy to study the twigs. Find one with pairs of twigs or buds that are situated on opposite sides of the branch or twig, at the same level, an important clue for identification. Check a field guide or the article Opposite Tree Identification and try to identify your tree.

• A tree with aromatic inner bark

As you’re studying the twigs, scratch away a bit of the outer bark and sniff the green inner layer. Trees with strong-smelling bark include sweet birch, sassafras, black walnut, wild cherry, ailanthus. See Aromatic Tree Identification for more details.

Posted by Violet Snow

Vinegar is an excellent solvent of calcium, so it is an ideal way to consume calcium-rich greens such as dandelion, nettle, chickweed. The acid in the vinegar also helps the body absorb the calcium, according to herbalist Susun Weed.



Onion grass and garlic mustard make great additions to vinegar because they also add flavor to the final product.



To make a vinegar infusion, wash and chop the greens. Put them in a wide-mouthed jar, stuffing them down until the jar is full. Then fill the jar with apple cider vinegar and cap tightly. Use a plastic lid or put a piece of plastic wrap under a metal lid to prevent corrosion of the metal. Store the jar in a dark cabinet, labeled with the date and contents. Strain out the plant matter after six weeks of steeping (if you can wait that long), and you have a healthful vinegar for homemade salad dressing and other condiments.



My favorite salad dressing is also incredibly easy to make. Just fill a jar halfway with extra virgin cold-pressed olive oil, fill the remaining space halfway with tamari or other soy sauce, and fill the final space halfway with plant-infused vinegar. An optional addition is a clove of minced garlic, but I’m usually to lazy to bother. Shake well and pour over greens or rice and beans.



For more on onion grass and garlic mustard, see Edible Green Plants of Winter.

Posted by Violet Snow

Today I am paying attention to roots. As a child, I learned to draw trees with straight trunks that flared at the base, where the tree met the ground. But I never thought of the flare as the top of the tree’s roots. Now I’m looking at those flares and seeing how they often continue along the surface of the soil, half-buried for several feet for more.

Sweet and silver birches, in particular, have extremely athletic roots, running over and around rocks. I have seen them on cliffs, scrappy little trees hanging on by a number of slender roots that run across the rock and plunge into cracks to seek out soil.

There’s a silver birch up on the mountain that has a root, thick as a small trunk, extending down the face of a boulder to anchor the tree in the soil below.

Along the banks of streams, I have seen birches whose roots encircled rocks and joined together beneath the rocks, which were later washed away by a flood, leaving the tree perched in the air on its own roots.

From a distance, I see tan blobs in the branches of a tall tree. They look familiar, but what could they be? Walking closer, I find some on the ground. They are seed holders, the cup-shaped containers that result from the fertilization of tulip-tree flowers. The membranes that once held the seeds are littered on the ground, left by the squirrels that ate the seeds.

There is always something new to find in the woods.

Posted by Violet Snow

When I go onto the mountain behind my house, I study each tree, trying to see what makes it different from the other trees. I notice not just the big, majestic ones or the ones with gnarly trunks--I look at every one.

For instance, it’s surprising how many small trees grow a mere foot or two away from huge trees. You would think the competition would destroy the smaller tree. But instead the two trees embrace, their trunks sometimes meeting halfway up, their branches intersecting.

There’s a clearing on the plateau, a waterlogged section that is not hospitable to the forest trees. The trees around the edge of the clearing thrust their branches into the sunlight. One red maple trunk makes an arc toward the space, its highest branches contorting and mixing with the branches of an ash whose base is forty feet away. Even enormous pines list toward the sunlight.

The trees all wear skirts of moss from the moisture, just around the bottom twenty inches or so of trunk—I never noticed that before, in my years of walking here.

But these trees are all unusual, molded by the clearing. I want to appreciate every tree. I look around for an ordinary tree. How about this little beech? It’s quite typical, still wearing its brown, curled leaves. But how elegantly beautiful! No, it’s not ordinary. What about the pines, so many of them, so similar—but this one has an oddly shaped knot at eye level, and that one has a sheaf of bark separating just over a root.

The more I hunt for ordinariness, the more extraordinary things I find.

Posted by Violet Snow

The tall, dried mullein flower stalks are conspicuous, since they are often up to ten feet high. Here is a method I have used for making torches:

Collect a few stalks. Melt beeswax or broken candles or crayons in the oven in an aluminum pie plate or old pot. Spoon the liquid wax over the brown pods, leaving an uncoated stub at the top for a wick. As the wax cools and thickens, you can mold some of it around the seed pods.

To use the torch, light the uncoated pods at the top and stick the stem securely in the ground or in a pot of sand. Depending on the wind and the extent of the seed pods, a torch will burn for about fifteen to twenty minutes. Flaming torches in the dark are awe-inspiring and provide a connection to our ancestors in Europe and North America.

Another primitive use of mullein stalks is to make fire using friction, as I witnessed at a primitive fire-making workshop led by Barry Keegan, a former student of Tom Brown the Tracker. The first night of the workshop, more experienced students broke out their hand drills to practice making sparks.

A hand drill has two parts: a fireboard, a piece of flat wood with a small depression carved into it; and a spindle, the straight, narrow stalk of a dried plant whose end fits into the depression on the fireboard. The user rubs the spindle (often made from mullein or Canadian fleabane) rapidly between his or her hands, and the friction of the tip on the fireboard produces smoke and, eventually, a spark. I did not achieve the necessary concentration and coordination to create fire, but the process was spectacular to watch.

Posted by Violet Snow

In his book Sharing the Joy of Nature, Joseph Cornell writes, “[Naturalist John] Muir knew his trees so well that he could identify many species by listening to the distinctive ‘wind music’ the breeze made as it moved through their branches.” Inspired by this passage, I began to listen to the trees.

I had already noticed the distinctive clattering of quaking aspen leaves. Like some other members of the poplar family, aspens have flat leaf stems that make the small leaves quiver rapidly in the lightest breeze. The roundish, toothed leaves are quite stiff, perhaps accounting for the loudness with which they strike each other.

In the winter woods, beech saplings often retain their leaves, protected as they are by the taller trees. In woods with high populations of deer, who are not fond of beech buds, there are plenty of young beeches. The dried, curled leaves rattle smartly, with a brassy tone, when the wind engages them.

Oaks tend also to keep their leaves in winter, even the tall ones. Their call, strangely, is more of a hiss than a rattle. I wonder if the hissing is caused by the bulges and indentations of the leaves, which trap the wind among them.

The loudest rattle comes from the honey locust, which bears, in the fall, long, twisting pods, with large, smooth beans inside. The wind not only strikes the pods against each other but also shakes the beans within.

My favorite tree call so far is that of the pine, which generates a characteristic sighing sound. This soothing tone, if attended to, can calm frayed nerves, induce relaxation, and promote a meditative state. So the next time you think you need a stiff drink, if the wind is up, go instead to the nearest pine grove, and listen.

Posted by Violet Snow

See How to Make Cordage for instructions on the “reverse-wrap” technique of twisting and wrapping plant fibers to make string. When you get to the end of your material and want to lengthen the string, here’s what to do:

As you are getting toward the end of one of your two strands, overlap the remaining, unwrapped section, with the end of a new strand. As you continue twisting and wrapping, incorporate the new strand into the old one, twisting them together. When you get close to the end of the other old strand, do the same with a second new one. This works best if you started with one strand somewhat longer than the other. The splice will be weaker than the other parts of the string, so you don’t want two splices at the same point.

The first amazing thing about reverse wrapping is that the cord does not unravel when you let go of it, because of the reversal: you twist in one direction (away from you), then wrap in the other (towards you).

Another amazing thing is that the cord is more than twice as strong as the original fibers, from the tension of the opposing twisting and wrapping. The ultimate strength of the cord depends on the plant used and the thickness of the string. Starting with thicker strands doesn’t always work, but the thickness can be increased by taking completed cords and reverse wrapping them together.

Deer sinew, dogbane stems, and slippery elm bark are the strongest wild fibers available in the eastern part of North America. All were used by the Indians to make bowstrings, which must bear a high level of tension and pressure. You will probably find more mundane uses for your string; I hope you enjoy it.

Posted by Violet Snow

With cordage we could make shelter by tying materials together, our hunting techniques expanded through the use of bowstrings and snares, we learned to sew hides together and weave cloth and nets, and the list goes on and on.

Viewing plants as possible material for tools changes the way we relate to the natural world, supplying motivation to learn plant identification and investigate growth habits and properties of plants.

Making tools deepens that relationship. The process of making tools is meditative and relaxing and can, in most cases, be done in a social context. The resultant products are elegant and beautiful, a pleasure to handle, as well as useful.

Many primitive tools are difficult to make, but cordage is quite simple, although there is a brief learning period, as the basic concept (twist, wrap, twist, wrap) is mastered. And there is a wonder involved when you take a relatively fragile piece of plant and, by twisting and doubling, make a substance that is, in some cases, almost unbreakable without a sharp instrument.

Impress your friends! When I take students out for plant walks, they are invariably amazed when I cull a twig of basswood, peel it, and start twisting string as I talk. Everyone wants to know how to do it, and within ten minutes, most of them are making their own cordage.

My daughter was nine years old when we were taught cordage wrapping at a primitive skills gathering, and she caught on immediately. One man there had developed a cordage obsession, constructed a small loom, and was weaving a beautiful dogbane fabric out of handwrapped fibers. See the article Cordage Plants for a list of plant sources.