This week I am drying and preparing bitter aromatic herbs for teas and infusions and tisanes, using local indigenous shrubs and plants. Once again, I am not going into detail about the hows and whys because many of these decoctions need to be taken with extreme caution and not at all by those with blood pressure problems or who are pregnant. They have highly purgative properties along with stimulant and sedative effects.
Because of the pungent odours, I dry the branches or bunches of herbs in a cool oven with the door open. Or hang them up, protectd from dust, direct sunlight and flies.
Most people know about rooibos tea, which has the antioxidant properties of green tea but no caffeine. It makes a delicious light maroon-coloured tea, one of my favourites next to honeybush tea, both tea leaves gathered from bushes on the local mountains — I pick leaf tips on my walks.
In my garden I have several varieties of buchu tea, bitter but refreshing and a tisane that helped me through many years of menstrual cramps. It has the loveliest pink and white flowers in spring, has the botanical name of Agathosma betulina, and the dried leaves never lose their pungency. I keep them tightly sealed once dried because the odour is very strong. Sometimes I take this brew with honey.
Other wild bitter aromatics I use, very sparingly and with great care, are the Artemisia, also known as the Wilde Als or Umhlonyane, the wild dagga Leonotis leonorus or Umficafincane and the fine grey leaves of the Kankerbos (Cancer Bush) or Sutherlandia frutescens. There are international medical trials and research being carried out on all of these plants, long used in dfferent ways by Nguni tribespeople and the trekkers and farmers far from cities and conventional medical facilities.
Alongside and including some of these, there are the herbs known as Ubulawu, herbs sacred to the shamanic rituals of the Xhosa and Sotho and used for divinatory and prophetic purposes, using the psychoactive properties of such herbs to access conscious dream or trance states, often using the African ‘dream root’ Silene capensis. These facilitate encounters with the ancestors, ‘the hidden ones’.
The reticence and respect I offer these lesser known and very powerful herbs was once common to herbwyves and birthing practitioners all over Europe, as well as in Mexico or Peru or Asia. The knowledge and skills to handle and prepare and obtain correct dosages of such herbal healing potions was a secret tradition passed down from mother to daughter and the healing itself a matter of life and death.
So I hang up my small bunches of aromatic fine-leaved foliage with coloured thrads and note dates and times, pack small quantities of crumbled leaf and bark into labelled jars or porcelain containers kept safe on shelves above the hearth or counters. A year’s supply of summer herbs stored and ready for use.
This week then I am the apothecary of the herb garden and the kitchen is my laboratory, my cool tiled pharmacy and homeopathic outhouse. After each day’s work I smudge with lavender and sage for a pleasant and familiar fragrnce to dispel the darker powers. Which are of course bitter, but agents of light if used correctly and with pure intent.
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