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.
For those of us fortunate enough to live near forests, the woodland—with its watery seeps, shady hollows, and part-sun edges—presents us with a fertile opportunity to grow a bounty of food and medicine.
– I first met this beautiful plant as “Green headed coneflower” while exploring the rivers of the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. I had learned about using its roots as an immune stimulant, similar to Echinacea roots, from my teacher, Michael Moore. I was camping and felt the first whispers of a possible cold so I […]
– Yellowroot’s elegant, subtle maroon flowers are just emerging in March in the mountains of North Carolina. This native shrub in the buttercup family prefers the dappled sunlight and silty soils of the streamside and floodplain, but will tolerate drier soil in cultivation. Yellowroot grows abundantly in central and southern Appalachia near forest streams that […]
– If you’ve ever picked any part of milkweed, you couldn’t help noticing the deluge of copious white latex spewing forth. If any of the white sticky substance made contact with your skin, its gluey texture and tenacity was soon evident. Milkweeds latex deters herbivory through chemical and mechanical means. Imagine being a little monarch […]
