The Backpack

So, I’ve been toying with the idea of doing a blog for a while now. I said I’d start it when my exams finished in May but, wow, what happened to June and July and, well, August just flooded past!

Summer has been hectic since the exams finished with very few opportunities for herbal adventures and even less opportunity to write about them. My Herbal forays are always accompanied by my camera and tend to take the form of “I went for a walk and I saw…” but, this Summer, each walk has identified a need for a new item in my backpack of tricks.

Mullein (Verbascum thapsus)

On my first trip out I decided to head down to the old railway track to the patch of Mullein I had found last year. I had been too late for flowers but had collected seed and made a mental note to go back earlier this time. I couldn’t quite remember where I had seen it but the dry seed heads from last year stood out against the green.   With my eye now tuned in, I quickly spotted the tall fuzzy spires all around and a closer inspection uncovered the first year rosettes nestled in the grass.

So, I had my plant, I had my pictures, now to collect the flowers. Oh dear… What had I forgotten? I had nothing to put them in! A rummage through my pockets produced nothing useful and so, frustrated, I walked past spire after spire of delicate little yellow blossoms.

Woundwort (Stachys sylvatica)

My spirits lifted a little when I spotted this chirpy little chappy. I took several pictures to help me decide what it was when I got home to my flora. Unfortunately, being of the family he is, it wasn’t so easy to decide. I really needed the plant in front of me or, indeed, the flora with me when I saw the plant. I love my Francis Rose and find it very easy to use but, without the ability to look at the plant close up, working from pictures is guesswork. And so, my wee backpack of tricks expanded to include:

• Containers for collecting plant material
• My Frances Rose flora

• A loup

And with a little help from the lovely herbal community at www.herbwifery.org and a repeat visit, I finally identified it as Hedge Woundwort.

Eyebright (Euphrasia spp.)

On that previous walk, I had also been taken with this tiny beauty. I had taken pictures but, after the Woundwort episode, I had resolved to take my full kit out and ID it in the wild. And so, I settled down on the track with my flora and my loup and…

Fantastic! Result! Its Eyebright! And theres tonnes and tonnes of it. So, I’ve got a positive ID, I’ve got a collectable herb  and I’ve got containers for collecting. Let’s get to work. Oh dear…

I’m not entirely sure what I’m supposed to be harvesting. It’s a plant I’ve become more aware of recently as a friend had asked me about it so I had done a bit of background reading. However, I hadn’t really registered which parts were used. I would have instinctively said aerial parts but I was in no way sure. It would be criminal, I thought, to take a batch home only to discover it was the wrong part. What to do? After some “should I, shouldn’t I” contemplation, I hit on an idea. I fired off a text to some fellow students in the hope they had a herbal nearby or knew, for sure, which parts to collect. So I sat on a sunny bank of the old railway track for half an hour or so chatting with a few folk in Edinburgh via text and snipping a little harvest of Eyebright. I was in my element in amongst the weeds with a Flora and no Herbal but you live and learn and my wee backpack of tricks had recruited a new member.

Yarrow (Achillea millefolium)

From the car, I had been spotting a lot of Yarrow on verges and so, confident that I was fully tooled up, I set out on my bike to collect some from less well trodden tracks. After an initial disappointment when a previously identified patch had been trodden through by cattle (not so less-well-trodden after all!), I had one of those real guiding moments. You know when you see a hint of a path somewhere and you just want to follow it to see where it goes? Well, having come back down a path I’ve tramped many a time before, swithering where to go next, one such half-hinted-at path caught my eye. Curious, I followed it up the bank…

A carpet of red clover opened up before me. It was a real wow moment but, given the recent wet weather, these little ground huggers were still too damp to contemplate picking. But what was that over by the fence? Yarrow! And not that low leafy stuff of roadsides and lawns. No, these were tall, proud, fully flowering stands of the stuff. This was exactly what I had been looking for but, as I set about collecting, I realised I had a problem. The tubs I had in my bag for collecting were no way going to be big enough. I was reluctant to leave now I had found it as, what with one thing and another, by the time I had got back to the Mullein I had missed the flowers again. Luckily, I had thrown my handbag into the rucksack before I left and, by decanting the contents, I had an ideal cotton bag to take the Yarrow home in.

A Hedgerow Hippy’s wee backpack of tricks

So is my backpack complete? At the moment I certainly think so but no doubt some future ramble with highlight another glaring omission. For now it consists of:

• bottle of water
• brolly, warm jumper and hat
• mobile phone
• camera
• Frances Rose flora
and loup
• David Hoffman herbal
and scissors
• collecting pots…

…and I’m just away to sew some simple cotton bags for collecting which, inspired by some fab advice from Sarah Head on the Herb Society forum, I will also use at home, to hang the herbs up to dry in the dark.