Eugene weekly., September 07, 2017, Page 10, Image 10

HOWIE BROUNSTEIN OF
THE COLUMBINES SCHOOL
OF BOTANICAL STUDIES
DISCUSSES THE USES
OF OREGON GRAPE
IN THE FORESTS
OUTSIDE EUGENE
Not a
One Night
Stand
Wildcrafting in Lane County by Camilla Mortensen
S
ue Sierralupe stands on the trail, look-
ing into the creek-side trees and
brush. “Poor man’s opium,” she says,
pointing into the brambles at some
wild lettuce (Lactuca serriola). Sier-
ralupe explains that the lactucarium,
the latex or sap of the plant, can help
with pain.
As herb team leader and clinic
manager of the free all-volunteer Occupy Medical, Sierralupe
says the plant is sometimes given to homeless patients who
might be targeted for attacks if given prescription painkill-
ers. Wild lettuce is not related to opium, but for those on the
street, whose painkilling drugs might be stolen and sold, the
plant is a valuable alternative.
It’s the cool start to what will soon be a hot, smoky August
day, and Sierralupe is walking through Elijah Bristow State
Park, about 20 miles outside Eugene, pointing to native and
non-native plants and trees. It’s a park I’ve been to hundreds
of times, though with scant knowledge of what’s actually
going on in the greenery around me beyond an appreciation
for the sweet taste of late summer blackberries.
Walking with an herbalist and wildcrafter brings a whole
new perspective on what is otherwise a mass of green and
yellow vegetation. Leaves have names and flowers have uses
— even non-native weeds have their place for an herbalist.
Wildcrafters harvest plants for use in medicines and sup-
plements as well as foods. And picking the plants is only the
beginning. Wildcrafting is not just identifying and harvest-
ing the plants but also focusing on the botany, ecology, uses
and relationships to the places the plants are found.
From small herbal shops to nationally known herbal
schools and the herb giant Mountain Rose, Lane County is
home to those who love, use — and sometimes overuse —
the plants around us.
SUE SIERRALUPE POINTS OUT
NATIVE AND NON-NATIVE PLANTS
AT ELIJAH BRISTOW STATE PARK
PHOTO BY DAVID GEITGEY SIERRALUPE
10
September 7, 2017 • eugeneweekly.com
n
It’s another summer morning, earlier in the month, and
I’m knocking on the door of a quaint house on 5th Avenue
near the highway bridges not far from downtown Eugene.
Mrs. Thompson’s Herbs Gifts & Folklore looks like it
should be in an old neighborhood on a hill somewhere, not
nestled between boxy businesses.
It’s before business hours, and as Heather Níc an
Fhleisdeir opens the door to let me in, it feels as though
I’ve left Oregon, gone back a hundred years and landed in
a Scottish town. The wooden floors, the shelves full of
jars of herbs and tinctures, the Celtic symbols and the
herb garden outside — all give this apothecary the aura of
a shop from another time.
Níc an Fhleisdeir came to herbalism and wildcrafting
while working as a part-time interpretive guide for the
National Park Service, teaching trailside botany in the
Santa Monica Mountains. “Knowledge for folly,” she says
of this time. Although she could tell people all about these
plants, they were protected and couldn’t be picked and
used.
Fast-forward 25 years or so, and Níc an Fhleisdeir is
trained as an herbalist and runs the Academy of Scottish
Herbalism. The tie to Scotland is not simply a piece of Níc
an Fhleisdeir’s Celtic heritage, or because the academy
was originally founded in Scotland in 2000. It’s also
because, as Níc an Fhleisdeir tells it, she refuses to teach
what she has learned about indigenous plants used by
Native Americans. She can, however, “tell you about
European invasive plants.”
Like other ethical wildcrafters, Níc an Fhleisdeir is
sensitive to the ecology surrounding the plants. And cer-
tain native plants, as well as those historically used by
Native peoples, are “no pick” in Oregon, either because
they’ve been devastated by picking or they might be if the