The Time Issue

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i: Editorial

No time like the present Ella Leith As Autumn turns to Winter and nights grow longer, now’s the perfect time take stock. The harvest-time and back-to-school fervour has dissipated, and, whether we call it Samhain or All Soul’s Eve, the cusp of November invites us to remember those gone, to look back over times past, and to think of— maybe plan for —times to come.

Time is the essence of this issue, and with it, memory. Both of these are embodied in Marianne Hughes’ Herb of the Month, the ancient Maidenhair Tree (Ginkgo biloba). One of the oldest extant species on the planet, it has lived alongside dinosaurs and skyscrapers, through ice ages and nuclear explosions; an individual Maidenhair can live for millennia. Memory on that scale is near unfathomable, so Claire Gormley (The Chemistry Column) guides us through the formation of tree rings, through which a tree’s history is recorded beneath its bark. Along with the ancient memories of trees, we look at trees as memorials (Foraging Through Folklore), and at our fragile, all too human memories— going, going, gone (StAnza Presents...). For restorative remedies, turn to Rose Morley’s Flower Power, and see what magic Ann King (Notes from the Brew Room) has been brewing to keep the faculties sharp. Delving deeper into the role of the past in the present, Amanda Edmiston (Botanica Fabula) takes us on a journey of the senses on the back of a shooting star; closer to home, Callum Halstead offers Sage Advice about carrying beloved gardens with us to pastures new.

Our modern relationship with time is damaging our health, says Dora Wagner (Anthroposophical Views).

She outlines the impact of stress on the body, and emphasises the importance of taking the time to adapt and respond to our surroundings, and especially to the natural world. This, too, is the core message of our long read: Kyra Pollitt (Past Papers) shares her fascinating research into time as a core— and too often missing —ingredient in the process of healing. Healing, she reminds us, is at root wholeness, and to be whole we need real-world anchors— to the seasons, to the rhythms of the day, and to each other. At a time of acute crisis in relation to climate change, Patrick Dunne (The Climate Column) reinforces the same message: climate summits can only take us so far, he says, so what we really need is to invest our time, energy and belief in our communities.

Now snuggle down with Herbology News, let Maddy Mould’s striking prints tickle your imagination, and take time to be present and settle into Winter.

Honorary Executive Editorial Team Artistic Director Illustration Finance and Distribution

Catherine Conway-Payne Kyra Pollitt, Ella Leith Maddy Mould Maddy Mould Marianne Hughes

Herbology News is printed on FSC certified, carbon neutral, recycled paper, using non-polluting vegetable-based inks, made from renewable sources.

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i: Contents

i Editorial Frontispiece Contents

Ella Leith Maddy Mould

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ii Artist of the Month

Maddy Mould

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iii Herb of the Month

Marianne Hughes, Hazel Brady

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iv Anthroposophical Views

Dora Wagner

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v Notes from the Brew Room Flower Power

Ann King Rose Morley

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vi Past Papers

Kyra Pollitt

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vii Sage Advice

Callum Halstead

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viii The Climate Column The Chemistry Column

Patrick Dunne Claire Gormley

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ix Foraging Through Folklore Botanica Fabula StAnza Presents...

Ella Leith Amanda Edmiston Eleanor Livingstone

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x Book Club Kyra Pollitt reviews 48 Remember Nature: 140 Artists’ Ideas for Planet Earth, edited by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Kostas Stasinopoulos (Penguin: London, 2021) xi Contributors Looking Forward

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50 56

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ii: Artist of the Month

Maddy Mould maddymould.co.uk November’s Artist of the Month is our very own Maddy Mould. An illustrator and designer from Lancashire, England, Maddy graduated in 2016 with a BA Hons in Illustration from the University of Cumbria Institute of the Arts, subsequently taking up the role of Artist in Residence at the University of Cumbria 2016-2017. Since graduating, Maddy has brought her playful, eye-catching designs to projects in education, publishing, hospitality and entertainment, and, as Herbology News’ Artistic Director, she is responsible for the slick design and the evocative illustrations that you see in our pages each month. Currently living in the Scottish Borders, she draws on her beautiful surroundings and her love of folklore and history to weave her illustrative magic, producing prints, calendars and stationery lines notable for their stylised shapes and distinctive colour palette.

Maddy says: I have always been at home in nature— completely surrounded as if lost in it. I think many of us agree that there’s few things better for clearing our heads and lifting our moods than going outside and feeling the elements around us. I grew up in a small town with an abundance of hills and woods close by, and with this huge privilege of access to nature, I probably took it for granted a little. Then I moved away, to bigger places. These cities had plenty of green spaces, but life happened, working took priority, and spending time in these places became easy to postpone— an almost forgotten pastime, an occasional treat.

Over the last 18 months, like many others who have been fortunate enough to be able to do so, I have found my place in nature again. Using daily lockdown walks as an escape from life’s horrors, and absorbing the sweet simplicity of the mundane things around me that had been there all along, I reconnected with my roots. It’s a great feeling to notice things, to zoom in— picking out a sound or a colour or something moving in the bushes, and feeling connected to it while the rest of the world passes by. Trees and hedgerows, clover patches and tiny flowers growing in pavement cracks— these plants that have been silently doing their thing, sometimes for decades: growing, changing with the seasons, blending into the background. They are in their own realm, one that people often pass through but rarely truly enter.

My work has become focused on recreating snapshots from these little experiences. Most of my current work starts life as a strong memory of a place I’ve walked through, or a tiny moment that stuck in my mind. The feeling of the air around me, long grass blowing, crows in the trees overhead, finding fungi among the leaves. My illustrations aim to highlight these tiny details and turn them into everyday pieces that people can own or send to friends, in the form of greetings cards, prints and calendars. In my home, my safe cosy space, I like to bring the outdoors inside. If my work can help others to do this, and illuminate the magic of our natural surroundings for them, then I’m happy.

For more of Maddy’s work, flip through your back issues of Herbology News, or visit and visit www.maddymould.co.uk instagram: @maddymould shop: www.maddyxmould.etsy.com

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ii: Artist of the Month

Cover image Nesting ravens A4 print Images Hedgerow p. 8 Wreathed in pink jewels p. 11 Snow spirits p. 16 Winter berries A3 print p. 20 Spring returns as yellow p. 28 Rosy blooms p. 33 Golden gorse glow p. 39

New light, thawing snow A5 print p. 45 Moonlight hare A5 greetings card p. 47

All photographs are the artist’s own

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Maddy Mould Hedgerow

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iii: Herb of the Month

Ginkgo (Ginkgo biloba) Marianne Hughes, with illustration by Hazel Brady As the fan-shaped leaves turn to a bright, buttery yellow, the Ginkgo biloba heralds the arrival of Autumn. This tree has inhabited our Earth for at least 200 million years. After the devasting atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Ginkgo was one of the only trees to produce new shoots from charred tree stumps. This demonstration of resilience can bring hope— and both resilience and hope are qualities which we have needed for many months, and continue to need. Perhaps standing near a Ginkgo tree this Autumn, contemplating its remarkable survival, can be a tonic for all of us.

As Siewert (2016) observes: Ginkgo leads us to our centre and to our life force. It supports us in the process of accepting ourselves and our surroundings in regard to light and darkness. Ginkgo takes us by the hand and helps us to connect what belongs together.

For many years, Ginkgo has been a symbol in China for a long and healthy life. Chinese monks chew the leaves of Ginkgo, believing that it aids their mental agility. Indeed, the Ginkgo leaf does significantly improve and tonify circulation, and especially cerebral circulation. It inhibits platelet activation factor— which tends to make the blood thick and sticky, and which contributes to atherosclerosis (Ody, 1993) —so Ginkgo can increase the effect of anticoagulant drugs.

Synthesising a range of recent research, Ahmad et al (2019) note that the pharmacologically active constituents of Ginkgo are flavonoids and terpenoids, and that the therapeutic mechanisms of Ginkgo are its antioxidant effects, inhibition of beta amyloidal peptide, and modulation of different cell signalling receptors and factors.

Of relevance to the current pandemic, Buhner (2013) describes in great detail the mechanisms by which coronaviruses impact on the human body by attaching to angiotensin converting enzyme 2 (ACE-2), which is an integral membrane protein on many cells throughout the body including in the heart, lungs, lymph, spleen, vascular cells and kidneys. Once the receptors on these cells are compromised, enhanced vascular permeability leads to worsening function.

Ginkgo and other herbs can protect ACE-2 expression and activity.

It is probably the impact that Ginkgo can have on memory that the layperson is most familiar with, and so it is worth considering whether

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iii: Herb of the Month this impact is backed up by scientific research.

There are around 50 million people worldwide with Alzheimer’s disease (AD), and many more with other types of dementia. Liu et al (2020) reviewed all of the studies relating to AD since the 1980s and concluded that: Ginkgo biloba L. leaf extract (EGb) may be able to improve the cognitive function in patients who suffered from mild dementia during long-term administration (more than 24 weeks) and appropriate dosage (240mg per day).

So this is a positive message for people in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease.

Today, Ginkgo can assist not only our own resilience but also that of our environment.

Ginkgo is remarkable for being able to tolerate the urban pollution of our cities (Stobart, 2020). In so doing, it provides beauty to our streets and to our hearts.

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References Ahmad, I., Chattopadhyah, D. & Khan, M. S. A., eds. (2019) New Look to Phytomedicine: Advancements in Herbal Products as Novel Drug Leads. Academic Press: Cambridge, MA Buhner, S. H. (2013) Herbal Antivirals: Natural Remedies for Emerging & Resistant Viral Infections. Storey Publishing: North Adams Liu, H., Ye, M., & Guo, H. (2020) ‘An Updated Review of Randomized Clinical Trials Testing the Improvement of Cognitive Function of Ginkgo Biloba Extract in Healthy People and Alzheimer’s Patients’ in Frontiers in Pharmacology, 10, 1688 Ody, P. (1993) The Complete Medicinal Herbal: A Practical Guide to the Healing Properties of Herbs. Skyhorse Publishing: New York Siewert, A. M. (2016) Natural Antibiotics & Botanical Treatments: Heal Your Body, Heal Your Mind. Robert Rose Inc: Ontario Stobart, A. (2020) The Medicinal Forest Garden Handbook: Growing, Harvesting and Using Healing Trees and Shrubs in a Temperate Climate. Permanent Publications: East Meon

Maddy Mould Wreathed in pink jewels

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iv: Anthroposophical Views

The sound of a butterfly's wings Dora Wagner There’s a song in all things swinging Lost in dreams and still unheard.

And the world breaks forth in singing If only you choose the magic word.

Joseph von Eichendorff

"Oh, if only it were always like this and I could stop time." This cherished wish in a moment of leisurely relaxation contrasts with that heartfelt sigh when we run out of breath: "I wish the day had more than 24 hours!" We all experience challenges and pressures in our daily lives, burdened by that widespread stress— scientifically, ‘dysstress’ —that can make us sick in the long run. Your heart is swimming in your chest, you have no appetite, your hands get clammy. These are definitely stress reactions. Yet that's exactly how it feels when you've just fallen in love, and which of us would avoid that experience just because hormones set our bodies on alert? On the contrary, we are impatient; highly tense until that desired moment arrives, then wishing it would last forever and never end. And there it is— that positive, good stress that focusses our attention and energy on accomplishing exactly what is of greatest importance to us. It can make us perform at our best, be inspired and successful. This ‘eustress’ does not harm us, but gives us wings, activating our strengths. Dedicating yourself with passion and enthusiasm, acting almost non-stop and yet with great energy, getting the job done— this is not an experience you have while sunbathing on a deck chair.

Our autonomic nervous system oscillates in a temporal process, moving back and forth between tension and relaxation, between activation and inhibition, between eustress and distress. Stress is a physiological adaptation of our organism to internal and external demands. Whether a demand evokes eu- or dys-stress depends not only on unconscious and reflexive processes, but also on our individual socialisation (Opalka, 2015).

In the hustle and bustle of today's world, with all the demands of life and work, there are

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many occasions to feel overwhelmed or unwell. Every fear, every tension, every grief, every overload we experience is reflected in physical symptoms— shortness of breath, distractedness, rapid pulse, hypertension, sweating, insomnia, diarrhoea, a tense posture that invites back pain. What a pleasure it is to find ourselves in situations of ‘flow’, where our thoughts or activities run smoothly in the here and now, when hours pass like minutes, where we are absorbed in what we are doing, oblivious to worry, neither overstrained nor bored.

Reactions to stress are controlled by the central nervous system's connection to the immunologically important hormones of the adrenal glands and gonads. Disturbances of fundamental rhythms, such as the sleep-wake rhythm, have a negative effect on health. They directly affect our immune system, impairing its ability to deal with stress. This suggests that stressful experiences can also decisively damage our immune system by shifting or overriding internal rhythms. Understanding the importance of these rhythms is the ambition of chronobiology, which examines the temporal organization of physiological processes and the repeated behavioural patterns of living beings. For those ‘internal clocks’ to function, an ongoing resonance between inner and outer rhythms has to be established continually, being especially responsive to the cosmic periodicity of day, month and year. As the Earth rotates on its axis, environmental conditions such as the amount of light, temperature, and availability of food, change rhythmically. To improve their survival advantage, organisms adapt to such profound changes. There is a permanent interaction between the external signals of the environment and the internal systems of the

iv: Anthroposophical Views organism. With scant exception, all terrestrial organisms have evolved to accord with periodic processes in our solar system (Hildebrandt, 2021)— like our 24-hour rhythm of sleeping and waking. Air travellers, in particular, notice how important it is to synchronise their sleep-wake rhythms with the external signals of their environment— when crossing several time zones within a few hours, our internal clock gets out of synch. The most common complaints of jetlag are sleep disturbances, fatigue, dizziness, mood swings, loss of appetite and reduced performance in physical, manual and cognitive tasks. These symptoms usually seem to disappear after a few days, yet objectively measurable parameters— such as body temperature and hormone levels —only adjust after a longer period of time. For some people, shifting the clock for one hour from summer to wintertime can require several days of readjustment before their normal sleep pattern is restored.

This is because the biological processes of metabolism and the maintenance of homeostasis— together with the corresponding hormonal, temperature, and energy cycles, including the female menstrual cycle —are fundamentally cyclical or rhythmic, characterised by the periodic alternation of intake and excretion, expenditure and regeneration. Periodic balance is also found in all recurring states of want, need, drive and satisfaction— think of hunger, thirst, and movement.

Virtually all species— humans, animals and plants —have evolved cellular oscillations and mechanisms to synchronise with environmental cycles. In the plant kingdom, internal timers anticipate photoperiodic environmental stimuli, such as light and temperature, telling the plant when to grow, and when to flower for the best chance of attracting pollinators. Leaf movement, growth, germination, stomatal/gas exchange, enzyme activity, photosynthetic activity, and fragrance emission, and many other plant behaviours all show responsiveness to these rhythms (Hut & Beersma, 2011). The earliest Western observations of a plant’s circadian cycle date back to the 4th Century BC, when Androsthenes, a ship captain in the service of Alexander the Great, described the diurnal leaf movements of the Tamarind tree (Tamarindus indica) (Bretzl, 1903). In 1729, the geophysicist and chronobiologist Jean Jacques d’Ortous de Mairan noticed the leaves of the Mimosa (Mimosa pudica) opened towards the sun during daytime and closed at dusk. He wondered what would happen if the plant was placed in constant darkness. Surprisingly, he found that the leaves continued to follow their normal daily oscillation and concluded that plants have their own biological clocks (De Mairan, 1729).

In his Philosophia Botanica of 1751, Linnaeus described three groups of flowering plants that adapt their opening and closing times to cosmic conditions, including what he called

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iv: Anthroposophical Views the ‘aequinoctales’, or flowers with fixed daily time windows for pollination (Freer, 2005).

How this internal rhythm worked remained a mystery until the early 1980s when Jeffrey C. Hall, Michael Rosbash, and Michael W. Young discovered a ‘clock gene’ in all living organisms that encodes a protein accumulating in the cell at night and degrading during the day (Cha, 2017). Their ‘Discoveries of Molecular Mechanisms Controlling the Circadian Rhythm’ in which they explained how plants, animals and humans adjust their biological rhythms so that they are synchronised with the revolutions of the Earth, won the Nobel Prize in 2017.

From an anthroposophical perspective, the rhythmic and balancing processes of respiration and circulation are connected to our emotional life. The rhythmic system, represented by the heart and the lungs, is seen as the primal source of balance and wellbeing. Similarly, in many ancient cultures, breathing exercises form the basis of meditative and healing practices. Our inner rhythm is generated and communicated to the rest of our body, so positive activation is seen as primarily working from the soul.

Health is a mastery of rhythm— the ability to resonate with the world and its demands and to adapt and transform conditions according to one's own beat. A loss of rhythm is considered one of the main causes of disease.

In his lectures, Steiner describes those processes that follow the rhythms of both the human and the social organisms as an interplay of spirit and matter. Balanced rhythm and healing repetitions in professional, social and private life are seen as important

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prerequisites to well-being and health.

Eurhythmie— a rhythmic dance therapy —and Rhythmical Massage— a specific physiotherapy —are anthroposophical therapies designed to initiate and to accompany recovery processes.

Steiner once advised the young chemist Dr Rudolf Hauschka to, "Study the rhythms, rhythm carries the life". In the preparation of medicines, anthroposophical pharmacy works with various methods that take into account not only individual processes in our bodies, but the perpetuation of rhythmic cycles in nature, harvesting different parts of a plant (leaf, flower, fruit, root) according to the seasonal cycle. In order to maintain a particularly high quality of plant extract and to synchronize the rhythms and the essence of the herbs with those of our organism, special emphasis is placed on sophisticated manufacturing procedures known as ‘rhythmisation’, or ‘Rh methods’. ‘Rhtinctures’, for example, are prepared from crushed fresh plants or pressed juice by a fermentation process that follows diurnal light-dark rhythms by alternating temperatures of 37°C and 4°C in a corresponding warm-cold rhythm.

In homeopathic preparations— which, depending on the dilution, may no longer contain plant molecules —a repetitive, ‘triadic procedure’ is used. This follows a strictly defined, three-phase sequence of ‘weighing and diluting’, ‘rhythmizing’ and ‘resting’. In this way, the healing substances are believed to be imprinted with memory and information that resonates with the human body. These complex manufacturing processes are designed to preserve the powers of nature and the effects of the herbs. The products are made without preservatives and some even without alcohol. Both the production and the consumption of the medicine follows an alternative medical method, in which rhythm is integral parts to treatment.

It seems to me that in elementary vital, natural, pre-reflexive life, processes and time move cyclically—perhaps as in flowing waters; in circles, lemniscates, spirals, waves and whirls, sometimes fast, sometimes slow, in an eternal back and forth. And this also seems to

iv: Anthroposophical Views apply to our own experience. Our lives do not appear to run in a straight line, strung out from minute to minute. Perhaps this is why we sometimes seem to be spinning in circles but can also be sure that after a downward slide, things will start to look up again, or why sometimes we be timeless, existing only in the here and now. As far as I know, we humans are the only species that can reflect on our deep dependency and interconnectedness with our fellow world. Hence, in my eyes, our central mission should be to sensitively improve both our resonance and resilience; to remain healthy despite adverse life circumstances, to find constructive solutions to persistent stresses, and even to cope with traumatic experiences. We ought to be aware of how we can build these capacities more strongly. We should reflect on our vulnerability and our commitment to environmental conditions, our responsibility for our wellbeing and the preservation of our livelihoods. Perhaps it would be wise to pay more attention to the manifold rhythms and magical beats of our world and to dance in harmony with all flourishing life.

Opalka, M. (2015) An- und Entspannung im Rhythmus (Rhythmic tension and relaxation), Karl F. Haug Verlag in MVS Medizinverlage Stuttgart GmbH & Co. KG von Eichenorff, J. (1835) Wünschelrute (‘Dowsing rod’), tr. Dora Wagner

Images Adapted by Dora Wagner from Creative Commons References Bretzl, H. (1903) Botanische Forschungen des Alexanderzuges. Leipzig: Teubner Cha, A. E. (2017) "Nobel in physiology, medicine awarded to three Americans for discovery of 'clock genes'", article in The Washington Post (2.10. 2017). Retrieved October 4, 2021.

De Mairan, J.J.O. (1729) Observation Botanique, Histoire de l'Academie Royale des Sciences, Paris Freer, S. (2005) Linnaeus' Philosophia Botanica, Oxford University Press Hildebrandt, G. et al (2021) Chronobiologie und Chronomedizin–Bioögische Rhythmen und Medizinische Konsequenzen, Graz Hut, R.A. and Beersma, D.G. (2011) ‘Evolution of time-keeping mechanisms: early emergence and adaptation to photoperiod’, in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences, 366 (1574): 2141–54

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Maddy Mould Snow spirits

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v: v: Notes Notes from from the the Brewroom Brewroom

Memory, time and Ginkgo biloba Ann King Known as the Maidenhair Tree, Ginkgo (Ginkgo biloba) is a ‘living fossil’— one of the world’s oldest living tree species. Ginkgo leaves contain ginkgolides which are reputed to improve the circulation of blood to the brain, helping with cognitive function.

Traditionally, the nuts have been associated with memory enhancement, but recent studies have concentrated on the therapeutic components found in the leaf. After the ravages of Covid, and as we slow down with ageing— and especially during those periods of brain fog that occur during the menopause —it makes sense to gather our strength from a beautiful tree with a proven track record of withstanding the tests of time.

The parts of the Ginkgo we will use this month are the leaves. To boost their therapeutic action, we favour Hawthorn berries (Crataegus monogyna). With the gradual ageing of the body mechanisms over time, the heart needs as much support as possible to keep pumping blood to all our extremities and, in particular, keeping blood circulating to those parts of the brain that help with cognitive function and memory. This wonderful red berry is food for the older heart— a tonic and vasodilator helping to support weak heart muscles and prevent arteriosclerosis. It becomes a vital part of our brew, reminding us to care for the life source. The third addition to our blend is a longstanding personal favourite: Tulsi leaf (Ocimum sanctum). Also known as Holy Basil, it is revered in Ayurvedic remedies and is a sacred plant in the Hindu religion. Not only does it impart a delicate sweetness and uplifting scent to the mix, but its adaptogenic, neuroprotective and cardiovascular tonic

properties provide a solid base for our infusion.

To promote clarity and to diminish the brain fog which occurs from time to time, we developed an infusion which is simple, fresh and packed with energetic notes and vibrations.

‘Unveiling Time’ Infusion 1tsp Ginkgo leaf 1tsp Holy Basil leaf 2tsp Hawthorn berries Method Gently decoct the Hawthorn berries for 15 minutes. Put the Ginkgo and Holy Basil into your teapot and pour over the strained decoction, then leave to brew for approximately 10 minutes. This will extract the beneficial components and create a more rounded blend.

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v: Notes from the Brewroom

‘Lifting Mists’ Diffuser Blend In the Brew Room, we like to develop both an internal and external product to suggest a holistic approach. For many months now, Rosemary (Salvia rosmarinus) has been permeating our workspace to cleanse the air and aid concentration. If you have a diffuser, then a few drops of that single essential oil will work wonders. To create a rounded blend for longer bouts of focus, we like to add Lemon Balm (Melissa officinalis) and Clary Sage (Salvia sclarea) to the mix. Lemon Balm, that fresh nervine, has a long history of use for strengthening the brain; Rosemary aids cognitive function and acts as a stimulant for the circulatory system; and Clary Sage soothes and balances the emotions, enabling us to better concentrate on the task in hand.

Further Reading Sampath, S., Mahapatra, S.C., Padhi, M. M., Sharma, R. & Talwar, A. (2015) ‘Holy Basil (Ocimum Sanctum Linn.) Leaf Extract Enhances Specific Cognitive Parameters in Healthy Adult Volunteers: A Placebo Controlled Study’ in Indian Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology, 59:1, 69–77 Winston, D. & Maimes, S. (2007) Adaptogens: Herbs for Strength, Stamina, and Stress Relief.

Healing Arts Press: Rochester

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Disclaimer No recipes are intended to replace medical advice and the reader should seek the guidance of their doctor for all health matters.

The profiles and recipes are intended for information purposes only and have not been tested or evaluated. Ann King is not making any claims regarding their efficacy and the reader is responsible for ensuring that any replications or adaptations of the recipes that they produce are safe to use and comply with cosmetic regulations where applicable.

v: Flower Power

Healing memories Rose Morley This month we’re looking at memory. A complex part of the human body, memory likes to play with you, and sometimes play tricks on you. It can retain a lot of information— all the tiny fragments of experience that make up a life —and yet it can take all of that away in the blink of an eye.

Flower essences can help us to engage with the emotional side of memory, and the varying ways in which it plays with, delights and distresses us.

There are so many questions about our individual relationships with memory. Are you someone who lives in the past, or do you dream about— perhaps fixate on —the future? Is your memory mentally draining, or even drained? Does a particular memory hold you back from moving forward?

If, like me, you find memory a fickle friend, then using flower essences can make all the difference. From personal experience, and from my work with my patients, I have found that particular essences can help mind and memory move forwards, gain clarity, and focus on the here and now.

Of Dr. Edward Bach’s 38 Flower Essences, the following are considered especially suited to aid memory: Olive (Olea europaea), Clematis (C. spp.), and Honeysuckle (Lonicera spp).

Australia’s Bush Flower Essences recommend Isopogon (Isopogon cuneatus); meanwhile, from Scotland’s Findhorn range, there is Lady’s Mantle (Alchemilla spp.), Broom (Genisteae spp.) and Ginkgo (Ginkgo biloba).

This month, I will be focusing on Ginkgo flower essence. The Ginkgo tree has been around on earth for over 150 million years, and has been grown and used medicinally since time immemorial. In the herbal medicinal world it is more commonly encountered as a tincture or dried herb, but it can also be used as a flower essence. Its attributes include helping the conscious mind to find clarity, and aiding us in finding clear powers of judgement, association, and recall.

The indications that suggest Gingko would be useful include mental and emotional

restlessness, finding difficulty in concentrating, mental confusion and disturbed sleep patterns. Gingko’s response?

‘I align and connect, I stand in the light of truth’ (Leigh, 2012:56). Gingko encourages coherence and co-ordinated thinking and reasoning, and also stimulates endurance and connectivity. Crucially, it evokes the light of the conscious mind, helping to regulate the body’s responsiveness to light by magnetising the photosensitive mechanisms of the etheric pineal gland.

We know that stress, worry, and anxiety can disrupt the brain, but there remain many questions about the impact of these factors on an individual’s memory and well-being. You may find clarity and reassurance by exploring flower remedies. Seek advice from a practitioner, and give your memory some flower power.

Image Courtesy of Findhorn Flower Essences, reproduced with permission.

References Leigh, M. (2012) Findhorn Flower Essence Handbook. Nature Spirit Publishing: Findhorn www.facebook.com/AROSEmatherapies

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Maddy Mould Winter berries

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vi: Past Papers

About time: the lost ingredient of healing Kyra Pollitt The third in our occasional series of excerpts from student papers, this shortened article is adapted from Kyra Pollitt’s dissertation, submitted for the Diploma in Herbology at Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, class of 2020. The complete, fully referenced paper can be found on academia.com.

If you have a past paper you would like to share, please contact us at herbologynews@gmail.com.

Archaeological finds from twenty thousand years ago suggest European hunters carved lines and holes in sticks and bones to record lunar phases (Honoré, 2005; MacGregor, 2010). Similar activities were undertaken by the Sumerians, the Babylonians, the Egyptians, the Chinese, the Mayans, and the Aztecs (ibid; Bronowski, 1973; Grun, 1982). Each of these ancient cultures sought to resolve the chaotic human experience of time through observation of external, often inanimate, distant, and regular phenomena— the sun, the moon, the stars, the tides. In Chinese, Hindu, Buddhist, and Shinto traditions, this externalized time came to be perceived as cyclical; in the Western Christian tradition, as linear (Fisher & Luyster, 1990; Young, 2005; Gallois, 2007). Yet, despite what such efforts would have us believe, human time isn’t a single entity, and it isn’t straightforward either.

Our sense of time is composed by ‘separate neural mechanisms that usually work together but can be teased apart in the laboratory’ (Eagleman, 2008). It’s the flexibility of these mechanisms that allow us to feel time passing quickly when we are busy or distracted, and more slowly when we are paying close attention to its flow (Glicksohn & Myslobodsky, 2006; Grondin, 2010). The contentions of this essay are threefold: that illness, dis-ease and injury are states that can distort our lived experience of time by altering the flow of attention; that contemporary digital lifestyles also cause disruptions in our experiences of time, which in turn invite dis-ease; and, finally, that these distortions fuel the modern preoccupation with fast-acting medicines, which themselves can disrupt the body’s ability to heal itself more deeply.

The science bit: how we perceive time Our sense of time— our chronesthesia —is subjective. It is generated by the brain, using our awareness of the world, called noetic consciousness, and our awareness of ourselves in time, our autonoetic consciousness (Tulving, 2002; Brown, 2008). These temporal constructions are deeply malleable. Within the brain, smaller intervals are handled by the senses and some automatic processing. Incoming signals from each of the senses are processed at different speeds, with our neurocognitive machinery working to a default 3-second ‘temporal window’, so that the brain estimates time according to the number of ‘events’ that occur (Brown & Boltz, 2002; Eagleman 2008). Our feeling of duration mirrors the amount of neural energy used to encode each stimulus, each event (Eagleman, ibid). That’s why, in moments of crisis, the amygdala may form ‘denser-than-normal’ memories, recording more events than usual, and producing that sense of elongated time familiar to fans of The Matrix.

Longer intervals of time are processed by deeper cognition, but there is still great malleability here. We are able to make future arrangements, and to remember and follow time-based plans, by using our ‘prospective memory’ (Glicksohn & Myslobodsky, 2006; Labelle et al, 2009), but ‘the timing expectations of motor acts and sensory consequences can shift in relation to one another, even to the extent that they can switch places’ (Eagleman, 2008). Our expectations of how long things will take and when they will happen, as well as our recall of when things happened and in what order, can easily become confused.

The social bit: how we ‘do’ time That we presume time to be an objective, external commodity— a thing —is clear from the language we use to classify and describe it. We ‘measure’, ‘mark’, ‘take’, ‘use’, ‘pass’, ‘borrow’, ‘steal’, ‘waste’, ‘spend’ and ‘buy’ time. We equate time with money. We regard time as something ‘precious’ that can be ‘carved out’, ‘set aside’, ‘stored up’, ‘frittered away’, ‘lost’ or ‘killed’. Crucially, all these metaphors fail to recognize what Schutz (1974:48) calls ‘lifeworldly time’:

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The pregnant woman must wait until the time of delivery. The farmer must wait until the right time comes for sowing, or for the harvest. In waiting we encounter a time structure that is imposed on us.

This gap between the way we like to talk of controlling time, and the reality of lifeworldly time, perhaps gives rise to the greatest contemporary malaise. We try to increase our sense of control by distancing ourselves as much as possible from those pesky, untameable lifeworldly things— but the sense of security we seek comes at a price. Giddens (1999:46,47) suggests: A society living on the other side of nature and tradition— as nearly all Western societies now do —is one that calls for decision making, in everyday life as elsewhere. The dark side of decision making is the rise of addictions and compulsions… Where tradition lapses, and lifestyle choice prevails, the self isn’t exempt. Self-identity has to be created and recreated on a more active basis than before…

In striving to create and re-create self in this way, individuals appear increasingly unable to reconcile control of and submission to time. In 2001, the Japanese government recorded 143 deaths caused by overwork (karoshi); a 70% increase in the use of amphetamines was recorded in America between 1998 and 2004; and British government figures reveal the average working parent spends twice as long dealing with emails as playing with their children (Honoré, 2005). Sontag (1998:89) attributes such habits to ‘future-mindedness’— the ‘distinctive mental habit, and intellectual corruption’ of our times.

Time and contemporary lifestyle Whilst many questions remain about the brain’s co-ordination, its coding of signals, and its ability to speedily recalibrate, two aspects of the brain’s malleability are particularly significant here. The first is that, since duration judgments are created from visual stimuli (Eagleman, 2008; Grondin & McAuley, 2009), our sense of time passing can be altered by exposure to a flickering stimulus, such as a digital screen. Some research suggests that a person’s adaptation to a flickering stimulus can even result in distortions that continue beyond screen time (Johnston et al, 2006; Eagleman, 2008). Even the colour of our digital screens may corrupt our delicate sense of time (Gorn et al, 2004). So, the digital society we are creating is also badly distorting our chronesthesia— both when we are using screens and after we have switched them off. It’s no coincidence that children have difficulty judging how long they’ve been playing their favourite computer game.

The second relevant insight from neuroscientific research, is that for the brain to develop a sense of time, humans need to experience causality by interacting with the real world (Stetson et al, 2006; Eagleman, 2008). Those ancient peoples had it right when they were looking for anchors in the sun, moon, stars, and tides. Meanwhile, we modern folk— and our young, in particular —are becoming increasingly lost in the unanchored, timeless, online, digital stream. Although Western societies no longer recognize it, people are an essential part of the environment; they are as real as trees, rocks or skyscrapers, and their interactions with each other and with places ...influence their health and well-being.

(Lindheim and Syme, 1983) Who needs time? Time and the human body The problem with creating a controlled digital world is that, as biological creatures, we remain profoundly sensitive to indicators of real world time. Blood pressure is thought to show sensitivity to the Schumann resonance (Mitsutake et al, 2005); and there is growing evidence not only that human fertility remains tied to earthly cycles (Huber et al, 2004), but that the month of our birth may determine our susceptibility to certain, seemingly unrelated, dis-eases in adult life (Martinez-Bakker et al, 2014; Boland et al, 2015).

Yet more than half the world’s population now live in cities (WHO, 2010), where there is growing ‘desynchronization’ from our Earth’s fundamental rhythms. As Stevenson et al (2015) point out:

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vi: Past Papers humans in developed societies now spend the vast majority of their lives in conditions that mimic ‘summer-like’ environments. These so-called eternal summers are characterized by light and temperature conditions that lack seasonal rhythmicity. Presently, many of us no longer live in accordance with the naturally occurring variation in geophysical rhythms.

The consequences of this seasonal desynchronization include the retinal damage and increased risk of breast cancer caused by ‘ill-timed exposure to artificial light’ (SCENIHR, 2012); cardiovascular disorders (Scheer et al, 2009); respiratory disease, asthma, and allergies caused by particulate pollution (Beggs, 2004); stress, depression, sadness and psychiatric disorders caused by population density and disconnection from biodiversity (Dean et al, 2011); sleep disorders (SCENIHR, 2012), obesity and gastrointestinal dysfunction (Fonken et al, 2010); neurodegenerative disorders caused by the disruption of circadian and seasonal rhythms, light, noise pollution and over-stimulation (Wulff et al, 2010; Kaplan, 1995); and even genetically disrupted immunity (Dopico et al, 2015), increased morbidity and mortality (Stevenson et al, 2015).

‘Privileged’-world, post-millennial generations may be ‘born with a sense of relatedness to their environments’, but ‘through the processes of socialization they acquire a sense of separateness from environments, including the natural environment’ (Phenice and Griffore, 2003). A 2014 survey of 350 American children (Kabali et al, 2015) found: Most households had television (97%), tablets (83%), and smartphones (77%). At age 4, half the children had their own television and three-fourths their own mobile device. Almost all children (96.6%) used mobile devices, and most started using before age 1. ... At age 2, most children used a device daily...

Amongst this demographic, the effects of desynchronization from the natural world appear intensified (Kasser, 2002), fuelling a host of physical and psychological dis-eases (Lewis et al, 2012; Xie et al, 2015) and promoting unhealthy physical, sexual and psychological aspirations (Saguy & Riley, 2005; BraunCourville, 2009). Worse, as the natural world is disregarded, it grows endangered by the many insensitive ways in which humans exploit it. The resulting climate emergency is reported by scientists and our daily media as an existential species threat (Mecklin, 2020), and this sense of existential doom is itself increasingly understood to promote an emotional disconnection from the natural world (Buttlar et al, 2017). It’s a vicious cycle.

Faster pharma: time and treatment Of course, our society’s ‘future-mindedness’ (Sontag, 1998) can also bring benefits. Comparisons of outcomes of cancer care in Western countries have consistently illustrated the advantages of early diagnosis and rapid access to treatment (Berrino et al, 1995; Abdel-Rahman et al, 2009; Brown & Rubin, 2014). It is the medical profession’s belief that: When a diagnosis is accurate and made in a timely manner, a patient has the best opportunity for a positive health outcome because clinical decision making will be tailored to a correct understanding of the patient's health problem. (Holmboe and Durning, 2014) Yet, even pre-pandemic, National Health Service practitioners had, on average, ‘about six minutes’ (Honoré, 2004:148) to relate a patient’s presentation to a ‘pre-existing set of categories agreed upon by the medical profession to designate a specific condition’ (Jutel, 2009). Meanwhile, the application of market forces has given rise to such ‘ever-increasing options for diagnostic testing and treatment’ and ‘rapidly rising levels of biomedical and clinical evidence’, that: The rising complexity of health care and the sheer volume of advances, coupled with clinician time constraints and cognitive limitations, have outstripped human capacity to apply this new knowledge (Balogh et al, 2015).

Additionally, the ever-increasing variety of ‘profitable medicines for a range of daily activities’ (Fox & Ward, 2008:856) skews patients’ perception of dis-ease by medicalizing solutions to common social experiences, such as the ‘disruptive behaviour’ of children (Fishman, 2004), average sexual performance

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(Marshall, 2002), or shyness (Lexchin, 2001). Patients now behave as consumers, demanding speedy ‘magic bullet’ solutions (Marshall 2002:133). As medical services increasingly rely on the big data marketplace to hone diagnostic templates and tools (Balogh et al, 2015), dis-ease is re-framed as a fractured series of isolated symptoms requiring speedy, discrete solutions.

For the past three decades, the pharmaceutical industry has consistently been the most profitable business sector in the United States (Angell, 2000). An estimated 20% of its profits is spent annually on research and development; meanwhile, 40% is devoted to marketing (ibid.). This marketing relies heavily on the harvesting of digital data, which becomes the commercial property of the digital platform developers (Lupton, 2014), whilst ‘consumers’ are encouraged to believe that the ‘big data’ to which they contribute are more powerful and accurate sources of knowledge than other means of collecting information about people’s behaviour, experiences and opinions (ibid.).

This is significant, critics suggest, because it causes pharmaceutical industries to over-concentrate production on profitable drugs that meet the perceived needs of a particular demographic of digital consumers, diverting global capacity from wider actual and anticipated health needs (Angell, 2000; KellyCirino et al, 2018). There are also consequences for the hapless, digitally engaged consumer. In the United States, an estimated $25 billion is spent annually on the pharmaceutical treatment of wounds, yet these are often symptoms of underlying circulatory disorders, or diseases such as diabetes (Sen et al, 2007). It can be more profitable to treat a range of symptoms than to spend time addressing more profound, underlying conditions. The digital health phenomenon operates to ensure that there is not only ‘a pill for every ill, but perhaps more significantly, an ill for every pill’ (Mintzes, 2002: 909).

On curing and healing: time and tradition So where does all that leave slower, traditional, herbal medicinal practices? Does herbal medicine have anything to offer? Traditional herbal practices are drawn from ‘indigenous ways of knowing’ (Kimmerer, 2003:100). Rather than standing in opposition to science, these sensibilities and bodies of knowledge themselves emerge ‘from careful systematic observation of nature, from the results of innumerable lived experiments’ (ibid:101). Yet these traditional practices do stand against the pharmaceuticalization of health and medicine, and the rapacious consumption that disrupts our chronesthesia. Fortunately, there is an increasing recognition that quality healthcare and the delivery of that care need to take a more holistic, patient-centric approach, an approach that emphasizes healing as important as curing.

(Firth et al, 2015:44) Healing is differentiated from cure by engagement with the ‘repair and recovery of mind, body, and spirit’ (Smith et al, 2013) in addition to the eradication of physical symptoms. This focus on wholeness derives from the Hippocratic view of health as a state of harmonious balance between body and soul (McElligot, 2010). Indeed, the origin of the English word ‘healing’ lies in ‘haelen’, Old English for ‘wholeness’ (Quinn, 1997).

Firth et al (2015) determine four ‘defining attributes of healing’: it is a process which evolves over time; it is a ‘dynamic, emergent, and experiential’ movement from ‘an undesired state’ towards ‘renewal’; it ‘occurs’ in ‘mind, body, and spirit’ in ‘expected and unexpected ways, creating a new entity’; and it ‘engages the individual’s innate ability to repair damage and recover function’.

Whilst some consensus emerges about what healing is, there is less clarity on how it might be delivered.

To determine relevant qualitative information, physicians must take the time to elicit any ‘changes in sensations and feelings’, ‘changes in self-concepts and values’, or ‘changes in medical symptoms and complaints’ (Firth et al, 2015). Both time and dialogue are central to the ‘construction of meaning’ and ‘cognitive reframing’ recommended by German theorists (Teut et al, 2014). The ambitions of healing, then, neatly reflect the conceptualization of time as a fundamental, integrated, physiological system.

Zahourek (2005:106-7) argues that ‘transformative change (healing) is dependent on intentionality’, which is ‘essential’ to ‘perceiving mind-body-spirit unity’. Within the transformative healing encounter, intentionality is variously understood as ‘focused attention’, ‘mental projection of awareness, with purpose

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vi: Past Papers and efficacy’ (Braud & Schlitz, 1991:31), or ‘the influence of one person on another’ (Pilkington, 2000) through attitudes, behaviours, interpersonal relationships, motives, motivation, and actions. To date, literature on the practical effects of intentionality in healing is slight, and embraces concepts unfamiliar to the Western medical cannon, such as acts of ‘quieting’ and affirmation, and a ‘unity of universal life energy’ (Heidt, 1990). Yet these concepts are readily found in Traditional Chinese Medicine (Rosenberg, 2018), in the ‘gunas’, yogic ‘prana’ and ‘chi’ of the Indic traditions (Clark, 2002; Lad, 2002), in the energetics of homeopathy (Kent & Loos, 2009), in Bach Flower Remedies (Barnard, 1987), and beyond. Indeed, throughout traditional herbalism, there is widespread acknowledgement of time physiology manifest as ‘energy’, or ‘spirit’, and this is even considered transferable between plants, humans, and other living beings (Pendell, 2005; Wood, 2016). It’s a perspective that is increasingly validated both philosophically (Ingold, 2011; Lovelock, 2016), and through empirical studies in botany and phytochemistry (Teixeira et al, 2010; Ncube et al, 2011; Jayanthy et al, 2013; Ahl et al, 2014; Li et al, 2015; Gololo et al, 2016; Satyavarapu et al, 2020).

Diagnosis and prescription So, scientific research is beginning to reveal time as a product of complex, multi-layered interactions between internal chemical-biological processes which have evolved to be responsive to external phenomena (earth processes). These human time systems are delicate, malleable and are therefore highly vulnerable to changes in the constellation of environmental factors under which they have evolved (Stevenson et al, 2015).

In the 21st century, our interactions with environmental factors have become so distorted that our internal time systems are malfunctioning. It is now beyond doubt that: temporal mismatches between the environment and circadian biology…have detrimental effects on health and well-being (ibid.).

Moreover, the disparity between nature and popular Western conceptions of time creates a ‘frame conflict’ (Wodak, 1996) in which our highly sensitive time physiology can only exacerbate our dyschronesthesia. The resulting dis-ease is increasingly serviced by big pharma: [P]eople have lost the ability to read the role of a plant from the landscape and read instead the ‘directions for use’ on a tamper-proof bottle of Echinacea (Kimmerer, 2003:101) So many interrelated physiological systems are recruited to serve the human time system, that the symptoms of dysfunction may be correspondingly broad. This may have obscured science’s ability to appropriately identify the role of dyschronesthesia in many common disorders.

Nonetheless, it follows that the diagnosis, management, and treatment of many contemporary dis-eases could benefit from prioritizing attendance to ‘chronotherapy’ (Li et al, 2013). Repair and restoration are less likely to be achieved by a pharmaceutical ‘magic bullet’ (Marshall 2002: 133), or surgical intervention, than by the raising of noetic and autonoetic consciousness and the reduction of exposure to mechanisms that disrupt or inhibit our vital time system. The failure of contemporary Western medicine to comprehend a diversity of symptoms as evidence of dyschronesthesia simultaneously strengthens traditional herbalism’s claims to the existence of a fundamental, vital, integrated physiology of time that is variously described as the ‘energetic system’, ‘subtle body’, ‘subtle energy’, and the ‘energetic body’.

Thus, in the treatment of dyschronesthesia, traditional pharmaceu

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vi: Past Papers herbal practices have more to offer than modern, pharmaceutically-driven medicine. Traditional herbal medicine provides opportunities to reintegrate the chronesthetic and the autonoetic: by holistically framing dis-ease in both diagnosis and healing; by calming expectations and raising auto-noetic consciousness through duration of treatment; and by respecting bio-diverse and seasonal medicinal ingredients that can serve to re-unite the patient with noetic influences.

From the preparation of materials to the diagnostic encounter, traditional herbalism is infused with acts of intentionality, quieting, and affirmation that serve as temporal correctives to chronesthetic disorders. To realize this advantage, however, herbal medicine must maintain the integrity of its tradition and resist the ‘pharmaceuticalization’ (Fox & Ward, 2008) of both herbal products and practices: it still remains possible, even now, to turn things around: to spin straw into gold, time into eternity, anxiety into ease and inspiration (McEwen, 2011:14).

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Maddy Mould Spring returns as yellow

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Where does your garden grow?

Callum Halstead It took four years to finish my first garden— that is, if a garden can ever really be considered ‘finished’. Four years of clearing, planting, pruning, training, moving, replanting— and of course the endless tidying, tweaking and finessing —until finally I felt that it resembled the image I’d been carrying around in my head since the beginning. Not only was this the first garden I had created for myself from scratch, but it was the first that I had created at all; its completion felt like a huge achievement. Having followed the lessons learned over five years of horticultural training, as well as the distilled wisdom of garden writers such as Beth Chatto and Christopher Lloyd, I was not only pleased with how the garden looked, but satisfied that the plants I had selected were appropriate for our local microclimate. Already, they were starting to flourish. With some diligent use of a small growing cabinet and the shelter provided by my front porch, I’d even managed to trick a

few plants that weren’t particularly well-suited to the growing conditions into thinking that my garden was exactly where they wanted to be. I will stop being so self-congratulatory in a moment, but these little triumphs proved that I had learned a thing or two about plants and that I could put together a good design for a garden after all.

Then, just as I was getting ready to enjoy my triumphant garden display for a fourth Summer, I received a job offer in a different part of the country. I had applied for the job, of course, but it wasn’t until after I had been accepted for the new role that the implications dawned on me. One implication in particular: I’d have to give up my garden.

If you are a keen gardener, and unless you are already well and truly in your ‘forever home’, the chances are that at some point you will have to leave behind your beloved garden.

Some gardeners might find it liberating to start afresh— pastures new, and all that. I recently watched a lecture given by the garden designer Arne Maynard, where he spoke about leaving a garden that he had spent fifteen years crafting; all he took with him was a dark-flowered hellebore and a rhubarb plant given to him by his godmother.

But for me, I just couldn’t do it. After pouring so much time, energy and love into my garden, not to mention a fair amount of pocket money, I was not about to simply hand over my beloved plant collection to the next owner of my house. It was time to spring into action and ready myself and my plants for the big move. I hope my advice here will help those of you planning a move in the future to take a little bit more of your garden with you when the time comes.

Should I stay or should I go?

Whatever time of year you up sticks, it will likely be an inconvenient time to move or propagate at least some of the plants in your garden. This was one of the first issues that I

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vii: Sage Advice encountered, as it was both too late in the year to reliably take root cuttings of some plants, and too early to lift others without risking losing them entirely. It was with regret, therefore, that I let my Baptisia (False Indigo), Eryngium (Sea Holly), and a few other ‘fussier’ plants stay put.

Fortunately, however, many plants can simply be dug up and moved. A word of warning though: having just lifted and potted somewhere in the region of two hundred of my own plants, let me say with some authority that this labour-intensive option is not for the faint-hearted! Additionally, if you do want to dig up a significant number of plants from your garden, make sure that you inform your solicitor as this does need to be clearly stated when your house is put up for sale. Your buyer might be rather shocked and angry to find that the garden— the one that looked so nice in the brochure —looks like the surface of the moon when they arrive with the keys.

Lifting plants during the Spring or Summer is likely to be more traumatic for them than lifting in the Autumn or Winter. If it can’t be avoided, ensure that you dig up as much root as you can for each plant and that you water them regularly to prevent them from getting too stressed out. Most of my plants were lifted at Midsummer— a ‘dangerous’ time —and the signs of stress were clear. However, the vast majority perked up again after a few weeks in their new pots, with only a few casualties.

Easier to lift were my Spring bulbs, which I grow in aquatic pots sunk into my flower beds.

This helps me to keep track of exactly where they are; when it came time to move, I simply lifted them out ready potted, without disturbing the bulbs too much at all.

Because I had time, I left lifting my Peonies (Paeonia) until just before our move in September. There’s a lot of myths floating around regarding the movement of Peonies; let me tell you now that most of them are complete flannel. Peonies can absolutely be moved and from late-Summer into midAutumn, and when the plants start to go dormant is the best time to do it. If your Peony

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is very well-established, then unless you have a crane at your disposal, you might just have to leave it where it is. I had to do this with one of mine. However, if it’s a relative youngster then the job should be far more manageable.

Rather than charging in with your heaviest spade, with Peonies it is better to approach their excavation as you would an archaeological dig. The aim is to get them out of the ground with as much of their spidery root system intact as you can. Imagine a dozen wonky parsnips all glued together at the top— that is what you’re dealing with, and the roots can be brittle. Start wide and work your way in towards the crown of the plant, gradually removing the soil. There will come a point where the tip of each section of root is likely to break, but just try to ensure that this is as far away from the centre of the crown as possible. Whatever you do, try to avoid knocking off any of the fragile pink buds you’ll see dotted around the centre of the crown.

These are the growth points for next year’s stems, and they can’t be replaced. Once your plant is out of the ground, you can either pot it up (you’ll need a big pot) or, if you’re going to be able to re-plant it within a week or two, transport it bare rooted to your new garden.

vii: Sage Advice Making the cut Smaller plants are obviously much easier to move than larger ones, so if you have enough time to plan ahead, it is well worth taking cuttings of the big ones to avoid putting your back out. Propagators and heat mats can speed up the process of rooting cuttings, but yoghurt pots and loo rolls on windowsills can also be effective if they are well looked after. I always use an organic rooting hormone powder to stimulate root growth— this isn’t strictly necessary but, at just a few pounds for a pot that will last for ages, it seems a sensible investment to me. At the very beginning of Summer, I stuffed a single propagator full of cuttings of Aster, Sedum, Linaria, Euphorbia, Agastache and more, watered them in, put the lid on, and left the whole thing under my garden bench for a bit of shelter from direct sunlight. After checking the water level occasionally and removing a Sedum that had started to go a bit mouldy, I was left with over thirty young and healthy plants in a single tray, ready to move with me to Fife— much more manageable than lifting the giant parent plants.

One of my favourite perennials for Winter and early Spring is Helleborus foetidus ‘Wester Flisk Group’, a form of Stinking Hellebore selected for its finely dissected foliage and the reddish tint to its stems and the tips of its flowers. It is very easy to grow from seed, and I will be growing a lot more of them in my next garden. Fortunately, unlike a lot of cultivars, ‘Wester Flisk’ comes ‘true’ from seed— meaning that plants grown from seed retain the characteristics of the parent plant. This is important to know, as if you collect seeds from most plants that have a cultivar name (that is, any plant that has a second part of its name written in inverted commas), the seedlings may look very different to the plant that you collected the seeds from. This is because the offspring are genetically different to the parent. A lot of the time, cultivars are not able to produce viable seeds at all, as their breeding has caused infertility. In this case, taking cuttings or divisions from the plant will be the only option for producing clones of the plant that you love.

A time to sow Easier still are seeds. The drawback here is that you could have a long wait on your hands to see them emerge into magnificent specimens that are ready to grace your new garden, particularly in the case of some large garden shrubs. However, many herbaceous perennials will not take that long, and in a year or two you could have plenty of new plants to re-establish for very little cost and only a bit of labour. For example, I collected from two lovely ornamental Alliums, Allium cernuum (Nodding Onion) and Allium wallichii (Wallich’s Garlic), both of which I expect to take two or three years from sowing to produce bulbs that are mature enough to flower. I also saved seed from Ligusticum scoticum (Scots Lovage), which I grow for its looks rather than for the table. It seeds itself all over the place and I could have just as easily dug up a few of this year’s seedlings to take away, but the seed gives me the option of growing even more.

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vii: Sage Advice Growing gifts Perhaps the easiest way to ensure that you don’t lose a plant is to give some of it away. If you have friends or family members with gardens or allotments of their own, sharing your plants with them can act as something of an insurance policy, just in case you’re not able to spend much time in your garden immediately after your move. This is something you can start doing now, regardless of whether you are thinking of moving or not. Start with the plants that are most important to you and that you would be most upset to lose. When the time does come to move, the more people that you have shared them with, the more people you can call on when it comes to repopulating your new garden. You may wish to leave care instructions if you are sharing anything that is challenging to grow, but it’s for you to decide exactly who you trust with your precious plants.

Relocating yourself, never mind a garden, is never straightforward. I currently find myself in a bit of a halfway-house, looking for somewhere to buy. The garden— more of a nursery at this stage —is full of regimented rows of around four hundred pots, still flowering away and awaiting the next move.

At least they’re all ready to go this time.

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Maddy Mould Rosy blooms

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viii: The Climate Column

COP26 comes to Glasgow Patrick Dunne It is finally here. The COP26— the 26th UN Conference of the Parties climate change summit —is happening in Glasgow just as this edition of Herbology News lands. What will it achieve? After the controversial actions of Insulate Britain, the group of environmental activists who have been causing roadblocks since September, how will the activists and protesters surrounding the conference be portrayed in the press? After the response to the proposed Cambo oil field development (see #StopCambo on social media), and as the Paid to Pollute claimants take the government to the High Court over fossil fuel subsidies, will the court of public opinion finally bring pressure on the heads of the British leaders?

Will the recent floods, droughts, fires, and oil spills— not to mention the ongoing warnings of future chaos —inspire or shame the leaders of economies and corporations to instigate legally binding reductions in carbon emissions, and to make meaningful commitments to arrest biodiversity loss? And will they do so in a way that centres justice, economic reform, and the rights of indigenous peoples above profit and maintaining the lifestyle of a minority of rich, mostly Western, countries?

There are still more questions. Will Boris prioritise necessary economic change while the fragile British economy is still (despite what he says) reeling from Brexit and Covid?

Will anyone in the US Senate pay attention, or is the insular instinct of the American political system and the hangover from the Trump administration too pressing for President Biden to risk political capital on? Will Australia bow to pressure to address its addiction to coal? Will Russia make concessions on its gas industry, or Germany its coal? What will China do? And the Saudi oil interests?

When the rightwing, conservatives or neoliberals (whatever the label may be) argue that the proposed climate adaptation and mitigation measures are ‘too expensive’, will

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anyone stand up with the counterargument: that the true cost of inaction is simply more than the planet can bear? Will anyone seriously discuss capitalism and degrowth and new ways to structure the economy, or will the powerful and rich do what the powerful and rich always seem to do to protect money and power? With whom will the media side? Will sufficient numbers of frontline activists and Global South land and water defenders be able to attend— and, if they are, will their voices be heard? Will Greta get listened to for longer than it takes a politician to take a selfie, and for Fridays for Future to post clips of her speech to a beaming audience of executives and politicians— who will then simply ignore her?

Will there be talk of climate justice, debt cancellation and real funding to support those communities who are already being poisoned, displaced, and burnt out or flooded from their homes? Or will we just hear incomprehensible wrangling about carbon trading, capture and storage, and future fixes? And— insult to injury —will we have to suffer hearing from the Heartland Institute, the Global Warming Policy Foundation, or those other organisations whose role it is to delay, obfuscate and create the illusion of there being ‘two sides’? In the grand tradition of tobacco companies and opioid-producing drug companies, their method is to argue for more time— for research, for conversation, for inaction —instead of the speedy legislation and radical crisis-averting action that is needed.

Will any decisions be made? By the time you read this, will there be any difference left to make? Will it all be sewn up, for good or for ill, by the time you read this in early November. Should you bother going to Glasgow on the 6th November for the protest march and the Global Day of Action? Is it too late to challenge your elected officials, to try to leverage anything from COP26? Is there

viii: The Climate Column

really any hope that there will be an intentional transformation of society away from the capitalist consumption the planet, and the destruction of people and places standing in the way of the profit motive? Is there any way we can reduce carbon emissions, find ways to store carbon, recenter our relationship to nature, as well as repair our relationships to each other and to ourselves?

Is there any hope at all that we can find a way to better live on this earth, knowing ourselves to be interconnected with all life on earth?

I want to be a part of that better way, so I will try to manage my disappointments and my media consumption. I will try to stay involved with the activists in Glasgow and to support actions on the ground there. I will go to the march on the 6th November, and I will try to stay active in building— in my own small way, in my own small community —the better way of living that we want.

The answer to the last question, I believe, is yes. It is always yes. COP26 is not the final chance for us to find a better way of living on this earth; in fact COP26 will not really even attempt to make the radical transformations I believe we need to build that life. But millions of people are already building that life in their communities around the world. And that is a reassuring thought.

For more information and to get involved: COP26 Coalition – www.cop26coalition.org Paid to Pollute – www.paidtopollute.org.uk Stop Cambo – www. stopcambo.org.uk

Hopefully see you in Glasgow, and beyond.

The COP focuses the world’s attention, and enough public pressure may bring some positive outcomes in some important areas.

However, I am not optimistic for COP26.

There will be huge public and media attention and big headlines about ‘last chances’, and this may lead to the media proclaiming that we have blown our last chance to save the world, or— more dangerous, perhaps — claiming that ‘the world has been saved’ by some minor accounting trick dreamed up by oil-producing nations and by promises of future (always future) technological solutions.

COP26 will neither ruin our chances, nor save the world. It is, at best, a step on the journey to a better way.

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viii: The Chemistry Column

Ancient memory Claire Gormley There is a tree in my neighbourhood that I love to walk by. Its bark is a soft grey, and its sturdy trunk twists at the base as if it is turning its neck to look behind. Whenever I see it I always wonder what might have happened to make it grow in such a unique way. What story could this tree share?

As a society, we revere our elders for the experiences they lived through and the precious memories they hold. This is one of the reasons why dementia is so devastating, not only for those living with the disease, and their families and carers who also suffer, but for society as a whole. While we may make an effort to save our elders’ stories so they can be appreciated by future generations, seldom do we extend the same appreciation for the ancient memory of the steady giants that tower overhead.

Every year trees mark down their experiences in the form of tree rings. Dendrochronology is the study of tree rings, and has applications across a variety of fields including archaeology and climate science. Through taking core samples of trees and studying the ringed patterns, dendrochronologists can determine the tree’s age and the various environmental conditions it has experienced over time.

Currently the oldest living tree known to humankind— an unnamed member of Pinus

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longaeva or Bristlecone Pine —has been cross-dated by scientists to be 5,070 years old as of 2020 (Guinness World Records). An ancient Bristlecone Pine family located in the White Mountains of California is widely accepted to be the oldest non-clonal species of tree, with many members sampled being over 4,000 years old and still growing (USDA Forest Service). These trees sprouted around the time the foundations of Ancient Egyptian society were being developed– between 3100 and 2686 B.C. The process of tree ring formation is not well understood, but it is of growing importance due to the implications it may have for carbon sequestration and climate action (Rathgerber, Cuny & Fonti, 2016). Initially, scientists thought that the amount of carbon that can be sequestered into wood is limited by how much photosynthesis a plant can do; however, there is the suggestion that xylem formation could play a more significant role (ibid). Xylem is a tissue responsible for transporting water and nutrients from the roots to the leaves of vascular plants; xylogenesis is the process of producing and differentiating new xylem cells in functional wood cells. The process involves five steps: division of a cambial mother cell; enlargement of newly formed daughter cells; deposition of the secondary cell wall;

viii: The Chemistry Column lignification of the cell wall; and programmed cell death.

Many of us are familiar with the cell cycle from biology class— cell growth, followed by DNA replication, nuclear division, and separation of the cytoplasm to form two daughter cells identical to the mother cell. In the case of xylogenesis, stem cells in the vascular cambium— the main growth tissue lying beneath the bark —divide to produce new cells that will form the phloem and xylem tissue, the latter of which goes on to become wood (Fischer et al, 2019). This process is thought to be highly regulated by auxin, a key plant hormone responsible for many aspects of plant growth and development, as well as other hormones like cytokinins and gibberellins (Balzan, Johal & Carraro, 2014; Rathgerber, Cuny & Fonti, 2016). These hormones have the incredibly important role of stimulating the production of the enzymes responsible for triggering the start of the cell cycle. The timing of this stimulation varies between tree species, but studies have shown that it is influenced by temperature and could, therefore, seriously impact tree growth in our warming world (Rathgerber, Cuny & Fonti, 2016; Roibu et al, 2020).

Following cell division, the daughter cells undergo a period of enlargement, which is considered to be the first stage of xylem differentiation (Rathgerber, Cuny & Fonti, 2016). Water and solutes flow into the cell as a result of the relaxation of the primary cell wall, so as to maintain high turgor pressure and keep the plant tissue rigid. An imbalance of water and solutes, caused by water shortage, can limit cell growth because the turgor pressure is not stable. The primary cell wall is restored after the volume of the cell has increased by 10–100x its initial volume. A complex array of transcription factors then coordinate the expression of genes that control the biosynthesis, transport, deposition and assembly of the secondary cell wall.

Secondary cell walls are typically composed of three layers which differ in terms of their thickness and the orientation of their cellulose microfibrils. Although the secondary cell wall

does not cover the entire cell surface— ‘pits’ are left to allow for the passage of water and nutrients from cell to cell —this structure provides woody plants with mechanical support, water transport and biological resistance (ibid).

Cellulose microfibrils and hemicellulose form a dense matrix in the secondary wall, which acts as the main load-bearing network. This matrix is then infused with lignin, a complex organic polymer, that forms chemical bonds with hemicellulose to reinforce the cell wall and make it waterproof. The careful lignification of the cell walls, which starts at the cell corners of the primary wall and extends into the secondary wall, ensures that the xylem tissue is rigid and waterproof, while also maintaining the capillarity properties essential for sap ascent (Rathgerber, Cuny & Fonti, 2016).

The final step of xylem cell differentiation, and thereby tree ring formation, is apoptosis— that is, programmed cell death. Apoptosis is triggered by an influx of calcium ions into the vacuole, a membrane-bound cell organelle that helps maintain water balance. The calcium ions cause the vacuole to break up and in turn releases hydrolases. These enzymes attack and degrade cell organelles, leaving an empty space surrounded by a thick wall after a few days (Rathgerber, Cuny & Fonti, 2016). Programmed cell death is a common process in multicellular organisms, but xylem cells are notable because they only become functional after their death. Ironically, the very process that solidifies the ‘memory’ of each season’s growth has parallels with the process through which our own memories are wiped through neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s (Moujalled, Strasser & Liddell, 2021).

While researching tree ring formation, I spoke with a friend who works as Member Support Coordinator for American Conservation Experience, a non-profit based in the United States. While doing forest maintenance work, she found an unusual tree ring pattern caused by a bullet shot straight into a tree some years

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viii: The Chemistry Column before. Why anyone would shoot a bullet into a tree is beyond me, but her fascination with the pattern— the memory —that remained I can understand. In time, dendrochronology may unlock the secrets to combat climate change, but until then let’s aim to appreciate not only the experiences of our elders, but the ancient memories of trees.

References Balzan, S., Johal, G. S., & Carraro, N. (2014) ‘The role of auxin transporters in monocots development’ in Frontiers in Plant Science, 5(393):1-12 Fischer, U., Kucukoglu, M., Helariutta, Y., & Bhalerao, R. P. (2019) ‘The Dynamics of Cambial Stem Cell Activity’ in Annual Review of Plant Biology; 7:293-319 Guinness World Records. ‘Oldest Living Individual Tree.’

Available from: www.guinnessworldrecords.com/worldrecords/oldest-living-individual-tree.

[Accessed: 8 October 2021] Moujalled, D., Strasser, A., & Liddell, J. R. (2021) ‘Molecular mechanisms of cell death in neurological diseases’ in Cell Death and Differentiation, 28:2029-2044.

Rathgerber, C. B. K., Cuny, H. E., & Fonti, P. (2016) ‘Biological Basis of Tree-Ring Formation: A Crash Course’ in Frontiers in Plant Science, 7:734 Roibu, C., Sfecla, V., Mursa, A., Ionita, M., Nagavciuc, V., Chiriloaei, F., Lesan, I., & Popa, I. (2020) ‘The Climatic Response of Tree Ring Width Components of Ash (Fraxinus excelsior L.) and Common Oak (Quercus robur L.) from Eastern Europe’ in Forests, 11(600):2-19.

USDA Forest Service. ‘Ancient Bristlecone Pine Natural History.’ Available from: www.fs.usda.gov [Accessed: 8 October 2021]

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Maddy Mould Golden gorse glow

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ix: Foraging through Folklore

Nothing is lost Ella Leith My three-year-old niece recently learned about a long-dead historical figure, and asked her mother whether they could go to her house and meet her.

“I’m afraid she’s not around anymore,” my sister said.

“Oh.” The three-year-old looked downcast, then brightened. “Perhaps we could plant a tree for her.”

This column is a bit of a departure from my usual folkloric foraging. Rather than reaching for archive recordings and centuries-old tomes, I’m looking to the immediate and intimate past— to family lore and traditions.

Family lore can seem a bit frivolous; after all, families are only tiny communities, and they all have idiosyncratic things they do or say or eat— a particular meal on a particular day; a nonsensical saying attached to a daily ritual.

Family traditions are usually short-lived, lasting one or two generations at most before they are replaced with new ones. Compared to the traditional practices and beliefs of much larger communities, with their parallels across continents and continuity across centuries, what makes these small rituals special?

Folklorist Henry Glassie gives an answer: ‘the big patterns are the yield of small acts’ (1995:409). An individual family’s lore draws on and feeds into their surrounding culture.

While people can be dismissive of their quirky

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household customs (“Oh, that? We always do that. Don’t know why!”), they often carry derivatives of them into the new families they establish— because not to do so would feel wrong, somehow. And all that elevates a habit into a tradition is the sense that it matters, even if no one can really explain why, together with the ongoing intention to repeat it. A tradition means something because there are memories attached to it, and there is reverence attached to those memories.

Ten years ago this August, my father took his life. Each family member has had to find a path through the complicated feelings of the past decade; these paths intersect at particular times of year and in particular places and actions. The small traditions of commemoration that we’ve created are meeting points and way-markers in the passage of time, moving us from the scorched earth of immediate grief into something more generative. Most of our traditions centre on a tree: a young Field Maple (Acer campestre).

We buried Dad at Sun Rising Natural Burial Ground and Nature Reserve, South Warwickshire, which nestles under part of the ridge of Edge Hill known as Sunrising Hill. In the fifteen years since it was established, swathes of young native woodland have grown amid wildflower meadows and open grassland. It has a pond, owl-boxes, bird-

ix: Foraging through Folklore riddled hedgerows, and an open octagonal shelter called the Roundhouse. The everexpanding areas of woodland consist of ‘memorial trees’ planted on the graves, each one with a small slate name-plaque at its foot.

Eventually the short wooden post bearing the name will rot away and the slate will sink into the ground, and as each memory-imbued sapling grows into a more mature tree, families are encouraged to see the whole woodland ‘as the memorial, trees growing, seeding and dying to allow new saplings space to grow’ (Sun Rising).

Tradition is ‘the creation of the future out of the past’ (Glassie, 1995:395), and this comes clearly into view at Sun Rising— especially as the grandchildren Dad never met begin to participate in our commemorations. We try to visit the Field Maple together on the anniversary of Dad’s death and again on his birthday. We toast his life and legacy with something (usually whisky, for those old enough); we sing a song; we lay some cuttings of Rosemary (Salvia rosmarinus), the herb of remembrance. These are our small acts, but they are part of a bigger pattern. Trees have been associated both with family and with the dead in many cultures throughout history.

Claire Russell argues that the tree ‘is the kinship symbol par excellence’ (1979:228) which can ‘represent a whole kinship lineage of many people’ (1981:57). Guardian trees planted at Scandinavian, Germanic and Celtic homes were believed to preserve the luck of the family. In The Floral Issue (July, 2021), I described how a family’s ongoing care for theirs was an act of respect for their ancestors and their place of belonging (see Hulmes, 2009). Furthermore, ‘the cult of sacred trees is so widespread as to be virtually universal’, and has long been associated with graves— in Ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome, Celtic Britain, Catholic Europe, Algeria, Tahiti, China, Japan and elsewhere (Russell, 1979:223-224). Often, sacred trees are believed to contain the souls of dead ancestors; in the Philippines, ‘when the leaves of these trees rustle in the wind, the ancestors are believed to be speaking’ (Russell, 1981:57). I don’t think we see our Field Maple

in quite this way, but we have started referring to it and other trees at Sun Rising by the name of the person they commemorate, and ascribing personalities based on their characteristics. “Oh, isn’t Gladys getting big!” we say of Dad’s neighbour, a sprawling Crab Apple (Malus sylvestris). “She’s giving him a hug!” As the tree gets bigger, its separateness from us becomes more apparent. It lives in a different dimension, and in a different community.

Exciting discoveries about the intricate ways in which trees communicate with their own and other species— using subterranean electrical signals, pheromonal scents and even sound — are still being made. We have learned that ‘mother trees recognise and talk with their kin, shaping future generations’ and that ‘injured trees pass their legacies to their neighbours, affecting gene regulation, defence chemistry, and resilience in the forest community’ (Simard, in Wohlleben, 2016:249). Trees are ‘even reluctant to abandon their dead’ (Wohlleben, 2016:4), and their vast interconnected root systems can keep felled tree stumps alive for years. Perhaps, as Tim Flannery says, we can’t fully understand trees

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ix: Foraging through Folklore because they ‘live on a different timescale to us’ (in Wohlleben, 2016:vii). Dad lived for sixty-three years; Field Maples can live up to three hundred and fifty. The oldest known trees are over 9,500 years old (Wohlleben, 2016:vii). Living in a different temporality, trees carry memory in their very fibres: each ring added to their growing trunk carries in its size and colour the imprint of the weather, water conditions, and details of injuries survived that year (Bridge, 2005). Time passes; painful memories become less raw; new memories put their roots down and interweave with the old. The misremembered words of Edith Sitwell’s poem form a family mantra: Nothing is lost; nothing is lost All in the end is harvest.

On a recent visit to Sun Rising, dark clouds hung ominously over the ridge above the burial ground. Optimistically, the small children, buggy and picnic were unpacked from the car and wellies and raincoats assembled, but almost as soon as we set off the skies opened, and rain lashed the wildflower meadow. In the negligible shelter of the windowless Roundhouse, the adults agreed it was time to cut our losses and go home.

“No, not yet,” said the three-year-old. “I want to visit the special tree.” And she pulled up her hood and led the way up the path.

Image Reproduced with permission.

References Bridge, M. (2005) ‘Dendrochronology’ in Encylopedia of Geology, Academic Press: Cambridge, MS Glassie, H. (1995) ‘Tradition’ in The Journal of American Folklore, 108:430, 395-412 Hulmes, D. F. (2009) ‘Sacred Trees of Norway And Sweden: A Friluftsliv Quest’, in Norwegian Journal of Friluftsliv, accessed via norwegianjournaloffriluftsliv.com Russell, C. (1979) The Tree as a Kinship Symbol, Folklore, 90:2, 217-233 Russell, C. (1981) The Life Tree and the Death Tree, Folklore, 92:1, 56-66 Sitwell, E. (1957) ‘Eurydice’, Collected Poems, Macmillan: London Wohlleben, P. (2016) The Hidden Life of Trees, William Collins: London

Sun Rising has produced an illustrated children’s book dealing honestly and unsentimentally with death, called So where are we going, exactly? Find details on the website: Sun Rising Natural Burial Ground and Nature Reserve— www.sunrising.co.uk

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ix: Botanica Fabula

The taste of memory Amanda Edmiston For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.

Vincent van Gogh

To remember is to hand on— to teach, share, create, treasure. Memories create value in everyday or overlooked items, made priceless by the stories they hold. Those relating love and wisdom facilitate change and carry us onwards, beyond transitional times. They are held in tastes, glimpsed amongst leaves. They bring back what has come before, to teach, share, create, treasure.

had heard as children, gifted us a sense of common ground. I started to see the connecting threads between plants and stories, and spotted that the medicinal and therapeutic nuances of herbs were often hinted at in the stories we remembered. I started to gather the tales and to collect people’s memories of plant-use; I wove the strands together.

As November blows in, its dark evenings beckoning us to light fires and recall happy times, I think of the Ginkgo tree (Ginkgo biloba) and immediately recall the place where my storytelling journey began over ten years ago: Glasgow's Hidden Gardens.

Becoming the group’s resident storyteller took me from volunteer to professional artist.

One of the first tales I re-wove from fragments of folklore and the mythologies of the countries my friends came from, was inspired by the idea of travelling to live elsewhere— as many of these families had done —and bringing with you a favourite food to retain a sensory link to the countries of your past.

As a new mum, the multicultural toddler group was my lifeline. In a group of grandparents, parents and children from an array of cultures and backgrounds, a sense of deep connection developed. On dry days we gathered beneath the Ginkgo tree in the centre of the garden. It offered shade on sunny days, a trunk to lean against, a golden carpet of lobed leaves in the Autumn which seemed to beg the children to arrange them in patterns across the lawn. It offered the perfect place to sit and tell stories.

Our various uses of plants for food and healing, and the legends and magical tales we

My story takes a girl— Orpita, an Indian name meaning ‘offering’ —on a journey from Bangladesh, riding on the tail of a shooting star. She glimpses the star at the start of Winter, and travels to find a baby she has dreamt of, far away in Scotland. As she travels across the night sky, she begins collecting precious spices and ingredients from her aunties across the world. The ingredients come together as the story progresses, to create a delicious seasonal pie.

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ix: Botanica Fabula

I shared the story as Winter encroached, leaving the branches of the Ginkgo bare, to a group of parents from six different countries.

It had started with research into the history of mince pies, a seasonal treat that held ingredients from across the world. Full of nourishing dried fruit and warming spices, this is the kind of food that evokes memory with every mouthful. The story grew from the Geminids— shooting stars I barely glimpsed through city lights, which became the magical mode of transport for Orpita. Star-drawn from aunty to aunty, she brings Banda spices from the Bay of Bengal; she collects Cinnamon (C. verum) from Bangladesh, to warm and ease the stomach, and warming Cloves (Syzygium aromaticum) from the Maluku islands. She travels over the Red Sea up to Greece for ironrich Black Corinth Currants (Vitis vinifera), gathering on her way Oranges (Citrus x sinensis) from Morocco. My heroine continues on the tails of the meteor shower to Portugal, to gather Nutmeg (Myristica fragrans) taken from Bandu— once worth its weight in gold, redolent of sleep. Finally, she finds her way to Scotland and adds sweet heather honey, mixes the ingredients together, and makes a delicious pie for the new mother of the baby she had dreamt of— a pie filled with the taste of every country she travelled through, a sweet treat to evoke memories and nourish. A pie with an immune-boosting story; a pie to share and eat as we recall our own stories around the fire as Winter draws in.

Amanda's current project 'Handing On' can be found here: www.botanicafabula.co.uk/handing-on For information about this year’s Geminids meteor shower: www.timeanddate.com/astronomy/meteorshower/gemini

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Maddy Mould New light, thawing snow

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ix: StAnza Presents…

Eleanor Livingstone At 87 (From Even the Sea, 2010)

Imperfect or perfect, historic or not, she can’t remember dinner

never mind our visit yesterday: the past in all its forms and personal conjunctions

is going, going, gone; the future’s out of sight beyond a hush of curtain.

Living in the present tense this moment—now—today she sleeps though most of it.

Eleanor Livingstone is a poet and editor, and was StAnza’s festival director until March 2021. Her first full collection, Even the Sea (Red Squirrel Press, 2010), now in a second edition, was shortlisted for the 2010 inaugural London New Poetry award for first collections. Her other publications include The Last King of Fife (HappenStance, 2005), A Sampler (HappenStance, 2008) and as editor Skein of Geese (The Shed Press, 2008), Migraasje: Versions in Scots and Shetlandic (Stravaigers, 2008), Bridging the Continental Divide (StAnza, 2015), Necessarily Looking Backward (StAnza, 2018) and The Arch (StAnza, 2019).

StAnza brings poetry to audiences and enables encounters with poetry through events and projects in Scotland and beyond, especially their annual spring festival in St Andrews. www.stanzapoetry.org

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Facebook: stanzapoetry

Instagram: @stanzapoetry

Maddy Mould Moonlight hare

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x: Book Club

Remember Nature: 140 Artists’ Ideas for Planet Earth (Obrist, H.U. and Stasinopoulos, K., eds.; Penguin 2021) Reviewer: Kyra Pollitt James Bridle’s contribution to this volume (no.

58, ‘Back to Earth’) is perhaps the one that struck me most immediately. I found his artwork translated some of the difficult, abstract, scientific information about global climate change into something I could grasp, something almost tangible. Here’s an excerpt to see if it has the same effect on you: According to researchers at the University of California, the global mean velocity of climate change is 0.42 km/yr, or about 1.15 metres per day1. This is the distance plants and animals— including us —need to physically move polewards (or uphill) every day for our immediate environment to stay the same. This velocity will continue to increase.

Shockingly real, right?

The inspirational actor behind this intriguing, challenging, and stimulating collection is the brilliant and famed curator, Hans Ulrich Obrist.

He and his colleagues at London’s Serpentine Gallery have taken inspiration from Édouard Glissant’s notion of mondialité— ‘a form of worldwide exchange that recognizes and preserves…the cultural complexity of the world in which we live’ —and they have been investigating what it might mean to make the gallery carbon neutral. Obrist asks: …what is the ecological cost of shipping artworks for exhibitions? Can we explore what might be called sustainable curation and develop new standards and practices? One of many possibilities is to invite artists to write instructions, scores and recipes that can be interpreted by others each time they are presented.

And that’s the basis of this volume. The contributions make for a varied and fascinating exhibition-with-a-difference. It’s a whole new, sustainable way of engaging with art.

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There is plenty here for every taste and sensibility, and I’m certain readers will each respond differently to each of the 140 artists’ contributions. I was particularly drawn to the vein of New Animism pulsing through many of the contributions. Crucially, though, this is a book that gives you plenty to do. Most of the artworks offer suggestions for actions that readers can take; as individuals, within communities, and on various scales— ‘an instruction, a DIY action, a recipe, a score, or an offering for the Earth’. I have already found myself posting my own instruction-artwork on my socials.

This is a volume that you can dip in to and out of at your own pace, allowing the ideas and proposals to percolate and ferment. My copy was gifted to me by a wise and wonderful person, and it feels like a wise and wonderful book; one that has already earned its prominent place— within easy reach —on my bookshelf. It’s certainly a book that I will be returning to again and again.

Loarie, S.; Duffy, P.; Hamilton, H. et al., ‘The Velocity of Climate Change’, in Nature 462 (2009): 1052-5 1

xi: Contributors

Hazel Brady’s background is in IT, but she has always loved plants and since retiring has expanded her knowledge, especially around herbs. She completed the Diploma in Herbology at RBGE under Catherine Conway-Payne. Retirement has also given her the opportunity to develop another of her interests— an artistic practice centred in drawing and painting.

Patrick Dunne is an Edinburgh-based community gardener.

Since 2018 he has, with his partner Katie Smith, co-organised an International Fringe event staging readings of the 2018 IPCC 1.5 Degrees Global Warming report, made lots of flat sourdough bread and camped, marched and organised as an occasional environmental activist.

Amanda Edmiston was raised in stories; her mother is a professional storyteller, her dad was a toymaker, her grandfather a sculptor, her gran a repository of traditional remedies and folklore. After studying law, then herbal medicine, Amanda began to blend facts, folklore, traditional tales, history and herbal remedies into unique works. Based in rural Stirlingshire, you can follow her on Facebook, @HerbalStorytell, and find more of her works at www.botanicafabula.co.uk

Claire Gormley is a graduate of Moray House School of Education and teaches biology and chemistry in Edinburgh. She earned an undergraduate degree in Biotechnology from James Madison University in 2017, and a MSc in Science Communication and Public Engagement from the University of Edinburgh in 2019. Claire is passionate about building positive relationships between communities and Science through education and engagement

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xi: Contributors

Callum Halstead is Senior Gardener at Cambo Gardens.

He studied BSc Horticulture with Plantsmanship at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh and brings this knowledge to bear both professionally and in his own garden, where he also practices as a keen floral photographer. IG: @callum_halstead

Marianne Hughes began following her interest in complementary medicine after a career in Social Work Education and voluntary work in Fair Trade. Starting with Reflexology & Reiki, she progressed into Herbal Medicine.

The evening classes at the RBGE got her hooked and she completed the Certificate in Herbology and, more recently, the Diploma in Herbology. Her current joy is experimenting with herb-growing in her own garden, in a local park, and alongside other volunteers in the RBGE Physic Garden. marianne@commonfuture.co.uk

Ann King has always dabbled in gardening in some shape or form is now a horticultural therapist and graduate of the RBGE Herbology Diploma. She is passionate about facilitating nature re-connection and enabling its therapeutic benefits by creatively adapting knowledge and stories for organised group sessions: either outdoors, incorporating exercise; or sedentary, indoor, experiential workshops. You can follow her on IG: @annlovesherbs or at www.thymefornature.com

Dr. Ella Leith is an ethnologist and folklorist who studied in Scotland and now lives in Malta. She particularly loves folktales and the storytelling traditions of linguistic and cultural minorities. IG: @leithyface

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xi: Contributors

Rose Morley qualified as a Bach Flower Registered Practitioner in February 2017, after studying the system for over two years. It was her longstanding, keen interest in alternative medicine, and her passion for flower remedies in particular, that led Rose to obtain Bach Foundation International Register (BFRP) Practitioner status. rose.morley@hotmail.co.uk

Maddy Mould is an illustrator living in the Scottish Borders. Her work is heavily influenced by the magic of the surrounding natural landscape.

IG: @maddymould and www.maddymould.co.uk

Kyra Pollitt is a graduate of the Diploma in Herbology at the RBGE. When not editing Herbology News, she works as a translator, interpreter, writer and artist. She lives on the Isle of Harris, where she is busily planting and growing a garden. www.actsoftranslation.com and www.wilderorb.com

Dora Wagner is a graduate of the RBGE Diploma in Herbology, and a Didactician in Natural Science. She also works as a Naturopath for Psychotherapy, and as a Horticultural Therapist. She currently lectures in Medical Herbalism at the University of Witten/Herdecke, and is leading a project reconstructing the medicinal herb garden of an Anthroposophic Hospital in Germany. dora.wagner@t-online.de and www.plantadora.de

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The last two years have been challenging for StAnza, as they have for so many arts organisations. But they have also provided a chance to dream, and StAnza has lots of exciting plans in the pipeline.

We’re aiming to position ourselves as a key intervention in poetry, enabling ever greater numbers of people to participate. We’re planning new outreach projects for both adults and young people, and a 2022 festival —both in person (fingers crossed!) and with a large digital offering. We’re also working to embed best practice around sustainability, equality and diversity across all our events.

Over the years, we have achieved a vast amount on limited funds. However, cutbacks from many quarters mean that money is particularly tight this year.

Please consider supporting our first ever Crowdfunding appeal.

We have some great rewards available for our supporters, from chances to win mystery book bundles to opportunities for mentoring!

www.crowdfunder.co.uk/choose-poetry

ADVERTISE HERE For a ridiculously small fee, you can advertise your products and services to over 2,000 interested readers.

We can embed a link to take our readers directly to your website, Etsy shop, or platform of your choice. £15 for a full-page advert with illustrations of your choice £10 for a half-page, with appropriately sized illustration £5 is all it costs for a quarter-page advertisement All monies raised go towards production costs Contact herbologynews@gmail.com 55

xi: Looking Forward

12 // 21: The Bare Issue If you’ve enjoyed these pages, be sure to catch our December issue:

   

Our featured body system: Bone Our Herb of the Month: Wintergreen (Gaultheria procumberis) Plus, Artist of the Month, Jenni Fagan, creates art from skulls and femurs Plus, your favourite columnists

And more….

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