#appalachia

It's coming up right now in the dry margins — dirty-white, papery, the kind of flower you'd walk past every day of your life.

Rabbit tobacco. Sweet everlasting. Used across the Southeast for congestion and a chest that won't open, long before anybody wrote it down. Steam, not tea: a small handful of dried flowering tops in a heatproof bowl, boiling water over, towel over your head, five minutes with your eyes shut. Wait until it stops scalding before you put your face anywhere near it. Not for pregnancy. Don't smoke it, whatever your granddaddy said.

There's no Gaelic name for this one. My ancestors never met it, so it keeps the language of the people whose land it actually is. The settlers called it everlasting because it holds its shape all winter — which is an observation or a promise depending on the week you're having.

What's the plant your people reached for, the one that never made it into a book?

https://thistleandmoss.com/p/when-november-comes-i-wanna-surf-that-blue-wave-straight-into-the-pipe?utm_source=PixelFed&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=fedica

#Herbalism #Herbs #Foraging #Gardening #Nature #BloomScrolling #wildflowerhour #GardensOfMastodon #FolkMedicine #Photography #Botany #Appalachia #Georgia #Solidarity

I'm trying to get more comfy shooting candids of human beings, and the Old Time Jam in Asheville was a good place to practice. The faces of instrumentalists are especially fascinating, looking alternately bored, transported, orgasmic.... #iphoneography #photography #portraits #candids #oldtimemusic #musicians #asheville #appalachia

Wild raisin. Viburnum cassinoides. Withe-rod, and up in the southern mountains they call it Appalachian tea.

Strip the leaves, wilt them a day, then dry-toast in a skillet over low heat, turning the whole time, until they darken and smell of tobacco and hay. Three minutes. Four at the outside. Steep a heaping spoonful in just-off-boil water for five and you get something coppery and faintly sweet.

The toasting is the whole trick. Untoasted, the leaf is flat and green and not worth your kettle. Be precise, though — the famous antispasmodic cousins are cramp bark and black haw, not this one.

What grows near you that your grandmother never had to buy?

https://twp.ai/4hueeI

#Herbalism #ForagedFood #WildRaisin #Viburnum #Appalachia #FolkMedicine #HerbalTea #FoodAsMedicine #Botany #Foraging #Plants #Photography