Pictures of plants are cool. Micrographs of specific plant parts are simply alien. Herbalgram has posted serveral on their website and printed them in their magazine. Incredible.
Clary sage (Salvia sclarea L., Lamiaceae) showing stalked and sessile secretory glands on the calyx trichomes (Cryo-SEM, magnified 752 times actual size).
Photo © Microscopix photolibrary
from the book "Secretory Structures Of Aromatic And Medicinal Plants: A Review And Atlas Of Micrographs" by Katerina Svoboda and Tomas Svoboda, micrographs by Andrew Syred.
Jim McDonald has been practicing the Art of Herbcraft for over ten years, and offers a knowledge of herbalism that blends western folk and indigenous views of healing with the Eclectic & Physiomedical approaches of 19th century western herbalism. Jim is a community herbalist, a manic wildcrafter and medicine maker, and has been an ardent student of the most learned teachers of herbcraft...the plants themselves.
Recently he made the following comments in reference to "dry vs. damp" tissues. I'm reposting those comments here with Jim's permission:
"...makes me think about the general protocol for addressing dryness and atrophy in tissues, which is really importnat when people are talking about what to do about, say, sinusitis. You just HAVE to differentiate between dry and damp, otherwise you might do something silly, like give goldenseal for dry tissues.Figure this: tissues need moisture from two sources: waters and oils. This is not only important in addressing structural concerns like hydration and pliancy, but it should be remembered that hormones need fluids to travel in as well. Deficiency in moisture inpeeds the ability of nutrition, hormones and neurotransmitters to get to and fro.
Anyways, if tissues are dried out, they need to get moistened back up, and there should be some assessment made as to whether waters, oils or both need to be supplied
Water can be supplied by the "wet" herbs, chickweed, cleavers & self heal come to mind. If lubrication needs to be supplied as well, mucilages are indicated. Plantian, Mullein, & Cornsilk are nice and possess other virtues that give indications as to when they should be used, and herbs like Slippery Elm and Marshmallow are almost wholy mucilaginous.
Oils should come from the diet, including both vegetable sources like flax and sesame (or ghee), and animal sources like salmon and fish oils and even (EEK!) butter and animal fats. Vegetable sources of oils and not substitues for animal sources of oils, so getting your EFAs from Flax or Hemp or Borage or Evening Primrose won't do the same that fish oils do. We need both (sorry, vegetarians). Also, my humble opinion is that wild salmon for dinner is far better than capsules of cod liver oil.
Sometimes, though, we may be getting oils, but our bodies are having a hard time distributing them. Burdock roots and seeds are excellent for balancing out the functions of the sebascious glands, be the skin too oil, to dry, or really dry here and really oily there. I've heard Sage is also good here, but don't know its niche and so can't really say how or when to use it.
Anyways, just things to keep in mind when considering dryness issues."
Jim suggested I mention a new book coming out by Matthew Wood
. It's called (I think) The Practice of Herbal Medicine and should be out in late summer of 2004.
... might turn your lungs black, but you're less likely to get Alzheimer's. But don't rush our to grab a couple of cartons of smokes just yet. The idea here is to show an illustration of the classic phrase "All things in moderation."
Busy, busy busy... Here are somethings to entertain while I try to get back in the grove.