What herbs are you growing?

[Guest Lester Weevils]

At one time Sassafras was the "New World's" biggest export to Europe. It does indeed seem to have very good tonic qualities and my wife and I drink Sassafras tea on a fairly regular basis. Besides the tonic effect, it also has anti-coagulant properties.

Sassafras was banned from commercial sale several years ago (1960, I think) because safrole is indeed a carcinogen and anecdotal evidence seemed to show that extended consumption could cause liver damage over time. What the freak-the-f*uck-out panic spreaders of the FDA didn't bother to take in account about safrole is it can not be metabolized by humans and so poses (in my understanding) no real negative health risk. I also seem to recall that in the early/mid 90's the ban was removed from Sassafras extracts from which the safrole has been removed.

Aside from that (we have sassafras growing all over our ridge and ready to hand), we also have mullein (Indian tobacco), rosemary, sage, calendula, purslane, cinnamon basil and a few others that I can't think of right off hand.

Thanks Timestepper. Interesting stuff. I should either thank you or blame you for mentioning Indian Tobacco, which caused me to spend the entire afternoon following various reference links. It was interesting and such, but on the other hand nothing else got done.

There was this disambiguation link-- http://en.wikipedia..../Indian_tobacco

Which I only got as far as the first disambiguation for kinnikinnick-- http://en.wikipedia....ki/Kinnikinnick

Following the links of various herbal components of kinnikinnick, which the article says vary by geography, and the different herbs and plants each of which contain witches brews of natural-ocurring chemicals, and reading on the various chemicals, and ultimately the whole day was blown! Finally terminating in reading pages by Alexander Shulgin, never heard of him before. Apparently a famous psychopharmacologist with a penchant for tasting his own product, and very busy in making many products for testing.

On one page Shulgin describes that various herbs give rise to a small set of essential oils, and that each essential oil is "only a step away" from becoming a powerful psychedelic drug. The sassafrass oil being one of the "essential oils". The raw essential oils themselves are not especially psychoactive. Merely "very close" to being psychoactive according to Shulgin. Apparently in the lab it takes expert hocus-pocus with numerous careful steps involving toxic or explosive chemicals to make that "small step" but Shulgin speculates that in the body, the body basically only has to add ammonia to any of the naturally occuring essential oils to yield potentially psychoactive chemicals "on the spot". And of course the body is by necessity a potent chemical factory indeed. Strange stuff. Maybe taste is not ALWAYS the ENTIRE reason people enjoy spicy food?

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It is neat you know how to identify all those plants in the wild. Possibly some of em grow in my back woods but I'd never know it. Perceptual psychologists and psychometricians make zillions of "standardized" tests, but wonder if there is a test for the particular kind of intelligence that makes it easy to notice subtle properties of plants, animals, or other objects? Not everyone has that aptitude. Anything can be learned but I don't have much aptitude for it. Wife can identify lots of plants and trees, but I can't remember and accurately ID what has been pointed out to me.

In biology classes, was beastly difficult to id one kind of frog from another, though of course they am frogs. In geology it was very difficult to take the tests where they have a bunch of rock samples and you have examine em and write down what each one is. In between the first and second college drop-outs, had a factory job and they put me to work in IE quality control awhile. One day the engineer brought in big boxes of chrome trim panels. Some of the trim had a bad finish and I was sposed to separate the good from the bad and ship the bad back to the supplier. He pulled out a few good ones and a few bad ones and apparently had no difficulty telling em apart. I kept questioning him about what it was about the bad finish, but the thangs all looked the same to me. Finally quit asking when it went on so far that he was gonna decide I was stupid, but I had a few reference samples marked good and bad. Went about sorting them as good as possible comparing to the reference samples, but it was kinda a guessing game because wan't quite sure what I was sposed to be looking for.

Anyway, perceiving slight visual differences is definitely a kind of intelligence. It would be interesting if there is a test that reliably measures that kind of intelligence.

Edited April 23, 2012 by Lester Weevils