Herbal Branch 35:
Cottonwood Lip Balm

Lip balm the way WE make it...

We're back!!!

It's been quite a month! Right after I sent the last Branch, we had this giant wind storm that knocked power out for 8 days. Luckily, we mailed most of your Wildcraft games by then. :)

I have been busy setting up my new acupuncture practice in Redmond, WA. If anyone lives in the Seattle area and wants to give Five Element Acupuncture a try, contact me.

GUESS WHAT?!?!?!?!?

Check it out here at Wilderness Awareness School...

Now, I know the description is pretty lame, but I promise this is going to be a MEMORABLE weekend. You can fly in to Seattle, they'll provide transportation and food is included in the cost.

We're going to do an evening introduction to plants and health. Saturday will be on all sorts of medicinal plant skills. Sunday will be on edible plants. We'll make a meal with over 20 wild plants that YOU gather!

Kimberly will join me to do some teaching as well. Saturday evening we'll make a pot of herbal tea and play Wildcraft!

So, if you want to really connect with the plants, as well as gather and make remedies hands-on, then this is the experience for you.

Once again, here is the link. You can register online. Call Wilderness Awareness School if you have any logistical questions. You can email me for any content questions.

For those of you in the Seattle area, I am doing a FREE evening talk at REI Seattle.

So... without further adieu, I will hand it off to my lovely wife...

How to Make Cottonwood Lip Balm

Happy New Year!

Here we are in snowy winter. It’s cold outside, and our lips are feeling it. Have yours been chapped or sore in the past weeks? Well, we have a solution for you…simple cottonwood lip balm.

This is a perfect herbal lesson for this time of year, not only because our final product will be so relieving for our lips, but also because this is a perfect time to harvest cottonwood buds. These sticky, resinous, beautiful smelling buds are best harvested when they’re still slightly frozen and thus less sticky for our fingers.

Cottonwood trees are self-pruning and so it is often possible to find branches below cottonwood trees that have buds in perfect shape for harvesting.

We do recommend harvesting from down branches or fallen trees, since buds on living trees are all set to unfurl into beautiful heart-shaped cottonwood leaves.

Here in Washington we’ve had some huge winter windstorms and there are lots of tree branches down just about everywhere you look, so harvesting has been easy.

The first step in making lip balm is infusing your gathered cottonwood buds in almond oil. We’ve already written a branch about harvesting buds and making infused oil. Check it out here...

So, use that method, BUT USE ALMOND OIL. Almond oil is lighter than olive oil and we find we like it better for making lip balm, but the process of infusing the oil is the same.

Once you’ve strained your cottonwood oil, heat one cup of it in a double boiler (or saucepan over low heat) with 2 ounces of beeswax until the beeswax is fully melted.

Pour into lip balm tubes or tins and watch it solidify. This happens within minutes of pouring.

The almond oil is moisturizing and cottonwood is antiseptic, pain relieving and will reduce inflammation, so it this oil will work nicely to heal our winter-sore lips.

The beeswax will provide a light barrier and help seal in the moisturizing oil.

Time to go out and pick some buds (before they open in the Spring)!

You can get almond oil, beeswax, containers, and DRIED cottonwood buds in case you do not have any growing near you...right here (they are listed as Balm of Gilead buds)

Enjoy!

–Kimberly