Desert Medicine Plant Hike - Mojave Desert TBA
I’ve been asked to teach a series of classes on Plant Identification on desert plants, ethical wildcrafting and medicine making as well as teaching a medicine making workshop at my friends amazing High-Desert nursery - Cactus Mart in Morongo Valley. So I’ve been busy organizing these classes as well as scouting for other areas to take folks for a plant hike. Each hike will start with a short plant meditation working an infusion made with a local medicinal desert plant.
Meet one of my Desert Green Allies, Eriodictyon trichocalyx - Yerba Santa - Hairy Yerba Santa.
A shrub with leathery like leaves that can grow from 3ft - 9ft. A native plant to the Mojave Desert that is also medicinal. One of my favorite for cold/flu season bronchitis, decongestant, expectorant and asthma. There’s other medicinal uses with Yerba Santa and she has long been used in Native American & Mexican Folk medicine as well as cooking.
I am grateful for her medicine for she has been one of my green allies when I had bronchitis in the spring, she’s quieted my crackling and wheezing lungs, opening them when I felt tight and congested. She’s helped me when I forgot my mullein tincture when hiking and began having an asthma attack, simply by chewing on her leaves she has not only quenched my thirst, soothing my throat but opening to my lungs.
She will be one of the plants that I will cover on the Desert Medicine Plant Hike and one of the plants that will be wildcrafted in the Desert Medicine Ethical Wildcrafting (part II portion) and she will be one of the plants that we will be making medicine with in the third part of the series, Desert Medicine Making.
I gathered Yerba Santa yesterday because I’m pushing off this bug. I’ve been making teas, Infusions, sipping my Elderberry syrup that has Yerba Santa in it and am now running low. Forever grateful that her medicine is accessible for me
Keep posted for the #DesertMedicinePlantHike it’s looking like February. I’ll post more on my website and I will also be posting on Instagram and my Facebook page. Links to FAcebook & Instagram on my website! Green Blessings from Yerba Santa, the Mojave and me🙂🌱🌵
