Roll out the red carpet for pineapple sage, flaunting her cherry-red bilabiate flowers atop slender racemes. Numerous pollinators flock to her elegant flowering branches, seeking nutritious pollen, sipping nectar, and dutifully transferring pollen from anther to stigma.
Passionflower is ecologically intriguing, drop-dead gorgeous, and an incredibly useful herbal medicine and wild edible. So I introduce this passionflower materia medica with some ecological, botanical, and cultivation snippets specific to this amazingly charismatic native vine, and hope that you wont skip this juiciness for the medicinal information.
How many times have you found yourself in this embarrassingly uncomfortable situation? You invite a treasured friend over on a hot summer afternoon and reach for the herbal iced tea you have lovingly prepared from fresh aromatic herbs in your garden, but then you realize with sinking humiliation that you only have plain Jane ice cubes on hand. You wish you could just go home, but unfortunately, you are already home. So you serve the plain ice cubes anyway and brace yourself for the gossip that will surely ensue from your frigid faux pas. “ What kind of herbalist serves ordinary ice cubes with their herbal refreshments?” Totally avoid that scenario, and stock up on these fancy pants herbal ice cubes instead.
Joe Hollis of Mountain Gardens, a botanical sanctuary in a small sheltered cove bordered by National Forest and nestled under the massive Black Mountains, including the largest mountain in the East, Mount Mitchell. The sanctuary boasts four acres of medicinal herbs and edible plants from around the world flourishing in countless niches created by terrain, aspect, water, sun, and shade. Joe has been acquiring useful plants for the past four decades by trading with other botanical gardens, gardeners, and seed-saving/sharing organizations. In his estimation, he grows over one thousand species of plants, including the populations of native medicinals and edibles he has encouraged in the adjoining forests. Mountain Gardens is the kind of place where one cannot step off the path without trampling on an incredibly rare plant, such as the only Himalayan ginseng growing in North America.
Refreshing hibiscus mint herbal iced tea recipe with key-lime ice cubes. Hibiscus, also called roselle, is made from the calyces (sepals, part of the flower) of Hibiscus sabdariffa in the Mallow family (Malvaceae). High in anti-oxidant bioflavanoids, Hibiscus has been the study of many recent studies for its anti-inflammatory, cardio-protective, neuroprotective, and hepatoprotective qualities. It is a good tonic tea for folks with heart disease or high cholesterol, and as a general preventative against free radical stress on the body.
