The Power of Naming in the Plant World

“Leta mukasi!” says the witch doctor living on the northern tip of the island of Pemba in Zanzibar.  “Bring mukasi!” His hand rests on the distended abdomen of a little boy who complains of stomach pains, a common complaint in a tropical region where food supplies are seasonal and parasites know no winter.  The plant is Leonotis mollissima, a…

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Cover Crop Planting Guide

As an organic grower I think about where good plants come from, and the first elements that come to mind are sun, water, nutrients and good soil structure.  We know that when we nourish the substrate of life, then life will manifest!  The quintessence of this is found in a single statement, “Keep it covered.”  If we cover the soil from the…

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2018 Traditional Roots Conference

The fifth annual Traditional Roots Herbal Conference draws on clinical tradition and modern scientific research to offer the best of both worlds. Enrich your knowledge of materia medica, both for general conditions and as applied to clinical cases. They’ll have sessions covering bioregional herbalism, organoleptics, medicine making, clinical case reviews and field applications. NUNM, the National University of Natural Medicine of Portland, Oregon,…

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Albany, Ore 2018 Mother Earth News Fair

Where: Linn County Expo Center 3700 Knox Butte Rd. E Albany, Ore. 97322 When: Aug 4 -5, 2018 With more than 150 workshops, there is no shortage of informative demonstrations and lectures to educate and entertain you over the weekend. Richo Cech will be one of the featured keynote speakers at the fair on Saturday, Aug 4, 2018. The…

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Seed Growing, Harvest and Storage

This is a synopsis of a talk given at AMMA’s Chicago ashram on Sep 30, 2017 to a crowd of 50 participants. The talk contains ruminations, advice, theory and and methodology for growing, harvesting, cleaning and storing seeds of medicinal plants. What is a seed?  One can describe its parts:  the seedcoat or testa that surrounds the fatty endosperm–the energy…

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