Street Roots • May 19-25, 2017
News
Page 7
KLOOS, fro m page 5
don’t want is for people to harvest the
wrong plant, especially if it’s a potentially
toxic plant. There are some plants, and I
mention this in the book, that are deadly
toxic in the area. All of those really deadly
toxic ones are in the parsley family, called
the Apiaceae, and anytime you are
harvesting a plant in that family, you need to
be absolutely sure.
No one who gets this book should go out
and start harvesting angelica, for example,
which is in that family. It also has plants that
look similar to it and could kill someone
with just a tiny piece of the root.
There s a lot of things like that where we
can learn from the plants; how to hold
ourselves energetically and work with our
emotions in a different way and be more
attuned with them. Specifically, in the book
regarding hawthorn, if we are talking about
the health of the heart and want a healthy
physical heart, we can’t ignore the life of the
emotional heart and how that affects us on
the physical level too.
E.G.: Is it through meditation that you
would achieve some of these psycho-spiritual
benefits?
S.K.: That’s a really good way to do it, to
sit with a plant, whether it’s the plant itself
in a natural place where it’s growing, or to
take the tincture or drink the tea, and just
open yourself in a space of meditation and
think of this plant as a teacher and see what
comes.
That’s how I’ve learned so much about
plants, and I believe that’s how people have
learned about plants forever - both the
physical stuff and the psycho-spiritual stuff,
because when you learn to attune yourself
to a plant’s energies, whether it’s the
physical constituents or the more spiritual,
esoteric side, you can really feel what’s
happening.
Actually, hawthorn was the first plant I
ever worked with in that way. I was taking a
class with a woman named Deborah
Frances, and she passed out hawthorn
berries to everyone and said, “Taste it and
sit quietly for five or 10 minutes.” We sat,
and then everyone shared what they
experienced, and we basically painted a
picture, both of the physical properties and
of the emotional and spiritual properties of
that plant, just within the group. I started
doing that with some friends here in
Portland, and then it turned into this public
thing, and for years I held weekly plant
meditations and all kinds of people came
and we learned about the plants together.
If you look at the accounts of
anthropologists talking to indigenous
cultures and the anthropologist asks, “How
did you learn about the plants?” and they
say, “Oh, the plant told me it was good for
this.” And then the anthropologist is like,
E.G.: Is there any particular plant among
the 120 that you outlined in your book that is
of any special significance to you, on a
personal level?
P H O T O B Y R W . S M IT H /W IL D F L O W E R C E N T E R D IG IT A L L IB R A R Y
Black hawthorn is plentiful in Western Oregon. Hawthorn is “an excellent remedy for the heart
on the physical level, herbalist Scott Kloos says, “and then on the emotional level, there are all
these teachings it can bring. It helps soothe a wounded heart and helps soften a hardened
heart, and it teaches us how to be in touch with our vulnerability. ”
error, so there’s a lot more to it than our
modern scientific research modality can
understand.
E.G.: What are some things that someone
who is new to wildcrafting should keep in
mind while they are out foraging?
PH O TO BY TERRY G LASE/
W I L D F L O W E R C E N T E R D I G I T A L L IB R A R Y
Devil’s club, which produces clusters of bright
red berries, is “a plant of protection, ” Kloos
says. “It symbolizes the protection of the forest,
and also our own psychic and energetic
protection. ”
“Oh, that’s so quaint - they think that the
plants talk to them.” And my experience is
yeah, they do. There was probably some
kind of trial and error, but with some plants
it would be impossible to find some of these
ways that they work just through trial and
DOUGHNUT
CROSSWORD RU ZZU
22 SW 3RD AVE. / 1501 NE DAVIS ST. PORTLAND, OR
ACRO SS
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Fermentation agent
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Have a bite
6.
Tree fluid
7.
Cake ingredient
8.
Three-ply cookie
9.
Hook's henchman
12. Ground grain
14. The gift o f __
16. Tease or ridicule
17, Francis or Kevin?
DOWN
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Affirmative 1
2.
Type of fritter
3.
Analyze or try
4.
Cake ingredient
5.
Très
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Deal
10, Potter's practice
11. Nosh!
13. Late rapper; abbr.
15. __ appétit
S.K.: Never harvest anything until you’ve
positively identified it. If you’re just
learning, start with some of the easier
plants. In the book I talk about the six
plants that everybody should know (black
cottonwood, nettle, Oregon grape, St. John’s
wort, western redcedar and yarrow). I listed
them because they are useful, and they are
easy to identify - there is nothing else that
really looks like them around here.
To help learn, I recommend going on
plant walks with other herbalists, or a
botanist or if you have a friend who is
knowledgeable about plants.
Look for the defining characteristics,
those are mentioned in the “How to
Identify” section for each plant - the things
you need to look for to know that this is the
plant you’re looking for. Because what we
p
S.K.: There’s many, but one that pops
into mind is devil’s club. That plant, I would
say, is my foremost ally in everything that I
do. It has a lot to teach on many levels, and
it’s a plant of protection. It symbolizes the
protection of the forest, and also our own
psychic and energetic protection. It got the
name devil’s club because of the way it
looks with all of its spines, and some
European person came along and said,
That looks like something the devil would
carry.”
I like to think of it as the club that keeps
the devils away, meaning the negative
thought forms that try to bring us down,
that we are so surrounded by in these times.
But it’s a really potent ally to help us stay
clear with ourselves, and also it’s a great ally
in healing deep traumas, especially deep
childhood traumas. On the physical level, it’s
in the ginseng family so it has adaptogenic
properties, it helps when the adrenals are
weakened, and in my experience, I’ve found
it’s especially good for people whose
adrenals are weakened because they are in a
state of constant alert, always on guard to
protect themselves from trauma. Devil’s
club teaches us how to be alert in a way that
isn’t taxing on the adrenal. For me it’s been
a huge ally in both transformation of trauma
and also that protection in the healing work
that I do, and then just a symbol of that
protection of wild nature.
emily@streetroots. org
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