Plant ID apps are helpful (when they’re accurate), but there is one drawback – they make it harder to learn plant ID for yourself. But there are ways to combat that so that you get good at plant ID – without having to memorize a ton of stuff.

It’s summer! Now is the time to be out there practicing with your plants. Yes, there are lots of apps that will try to identify plants for you, but this is about skill development – because when you know, you know. Working through the process of observation and identification isn’t just a one-time thing, like sending a photo through a plant ID app – it builds and strengthens the pathways in your brain that you use to do the job. So let’s get out there and be really looking at plants!

In the Olden Times, when you wanted to identify a plant, you’d need a guide book. Each one is a little bit different, but usually there’s a “key” to help you sort through all the possibilities and narrow in on a target. These start with distinct patterns, like opposite vs alternate leaf arrangement. Then you might look at the leaf edges, to see if they’re serrated, smooth, or something else. At some point you’ll look at the flowers, too: are they symmetrical? How many petals, and what color? All these details will help you to exclude some plants (or groups of them), so the set of plant descriptions & pictures you need to look at gets smaller and smaller, until you have a manageable number to work with.

So that’s how you’d use a plant ID guide, but notice something here: it all starts with observation. Even if you don’t know what “pinnate” or “glabrous” means, you can observe features of your plant and recognize its patterns.

In this episode, we’ll demonstrate the observation process for you, and you can play along! We go outside and describe a plant we know and love, starting with its leaves, stems, flowers, and other clear features. But we won’t show it to you until the very end. Can you figure out who we’re talking about, before we show it to you? Notice the timestamp when you have a guess.

Even if you don’t recognize it until we show it to you – or even after we do – it’s the process, the attention, and the habit of close looking that we really want to instill in you today. The more you practice observation, the better you’ll get at plant ID.

Wanna learn more techniques to help you with plant identification, as well as with learning herbalism in general and retaining the stuff you’re studying? Grab the free Herbal Study Tips course! This fun course is designed to make all your learning – whether that’s with us, from other teachers, from books, or from the plants themselves – more exciting and effective.

Like all our offerings, this is a self-paced online video course, which comes with free access to twice-weekly live Q&A sessions, lifetime access to current & future course material, twice-weekly live Q&A sessions with us, open discussion threads integrated in each lesson, an active student community, study guides, quizzes & capstone assignments, and more!

If you enjoyed the episode, it helps us a lot if you subscribe, rate, & review our podcast wherever you listen. This helps others find us more easily. Thank you!

Our theme music is “Wings” by Nicolai Heidlas.

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You can find all of our online herbalism courses at online.commonwealthherbs.com!

Life is pretty overwhelming right now, and it’s affecting the way our brains function. When we can’t focus or can’t remember things, we typically blame it on things like perimenopause or ADHD – but the literal firehose of data that comes at us every day is an even bigger cause: it’s a LOT for our brains to process!
Tulsi can help!

Truly one of the most versatile and multifaceted herbs on the planet, tulsi is a must-know plant for any herbalist. Its capacity as a nervine is immediately palpable, as it helps us release tension and anxiety without causing any sedation. When taken over the long term, tulsi expresses itself as an adaptogen – helping us to move more easily out of a stress response, back to a comfortable and calm baseline. Tulsi is also very flexible, and can be formulated with lots of other nervines and mental health herbs to create a perfectly personalized formula.

Some of our favorite herbs to pair with tulsi include:

• Ground ivy – for moving the lymph in your head (ear/nose/throat) – and maybe even the glymph in your brain!
• Elderflower – for draining stuck fluids from the head, and for releasing tense heat
• Ginkgo – for increasing blood flow to the brain and protecting the health of nerves
• Rosemary – for cutting through the fog and sharpening the mind
• Peppermint – for a breath of cool air moving through your mind, and for releasing tension held in the belly

Still feeling stressed? Check out our new Stress Management course! Learn all about adaptogens, nervines, restoratives, and herbs to lift your spirits in this inexpensive, focused course. It covers everything you need to get through stressful times – and to help the ones you love, too!

Like all our offerings, this is a self-paced online video course, which comes with free access to twice-weekly live Q&A sessions, lifetime access to current & future course material, twice-weekly live Q&A sessions with us, open discussion threads integrated in each lesson, an active student community, study guides, quizzes & capstone assignments, and more!

PS: If you’re in the Boston area, check out Herbstalk on June 6th & 7th! Ryn will be teaching a class there on Affordable Analogues for Expensive Herbs, and the conference as a whole is very much worth visiting. It’s the last Herbstalk ever, so don’t miss it!

If you have a moment, it would help us a lot if you could subscribe, rate, & review our podcast wherever you listen. This helps others find us more easily. Thank you!!

Our theme music is “Wings” by Nicolai Heidlas.

Support the show

You can find all of our online herbalism courses at online.commonwealthherbs.com!

We’ve come to the end of the “mainstream” top-40 best-selling herbs list! Dandelion, rhubarb, and ginseng take the last three spots.

Dandelion is an herbal workhorse. It’s inexpensive because it’s ubiquitous, and its resilience is legendary – dandelion coming up through the concrete is one of the herbalist’s favorite symbols of resistance and the power of nature. Much more than a simple “detox” herb, dandelion root and leaf improve the functions of our liver and kidneys, feed both us and our gut flora, and eliminate excess fluids from the system. Its bright yellow flowers can even lift our spirits when taken in tincture or wine – this is one of Ryn’s indispensable herbal remedies for the winter doldrums.

Rhubarb root used to be much more of an herbal mainstay than it is in contemporary herbalism. The Eclectics of the 19th century worked with it extensively, largely for its “cathartic” – stimulant laxative – properties. It is a key ingredient in the famous “neutralizing cordial”, a formula developed in that era and designed to be a nearly-universal remedy for digestive upsets of all sorts. This remedy is still prepared by herbalists today, though often with some variations in the ingredient list.

Ginseng needs no introduction. It is one of the most famous medicinal herbs in the world, and it is “the original adaptogen” – the category which has spawned millions of dollars in product sales in our stressed-out, depleted, fatigued society. Ginseng products can be extremely helpful, but you absolutely cannot simply buy the first one you find: these remedies are very prone to adulteration. That, too, is an old problem: historical texts are littered with descriptions of adulteration and falsification of supposedly mature, supposedly Panax roots which were nothing of the kind. Some things never change…

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“Detox” came up in this episode (again), and we hinted at the issues rampant in this category of supplement products. For the full story, you’ll want to dig in to our course Elements of Detoxification. This course takes a fresh look at the concepts of “toxicity” and “detoxification”, a holistic perspective that goes beyond “cleanses” and products. Learn a memorable, practical model for understanding how the body’s detox functions work, along with the roles herbs can play in supporting them.

Like all our offerings, this is a self-paced online video course, which comes with free access to twice-weekly live Q&A sessions, lifetime access to current & future course material, twice-weekly live Q&A sessions with us, open discussion threads integrated in each lesson, an active student community, study guides, quizzes & capstone assignments, and more!

If you have a moment, it would help us a lot if you could subscribe, rate, & review our podcast wherever you listen. This helps others find us more easily. Thank you!!

Our theme music is “Wings” by Nicolai Heidlas.

Support the show

You can find all of our online herbalism courses at online.commonwealthherbs.com!