From HerbMentor.com, this is Herb Mentor Radio.
You are listening to Herb Mentor Radio on HerbMentor.com. I'm John Gallagher.
My guest today is Doug Elliott. Doug is a naturalist, herbalist, musician, and storyteller. He has performed and presented at festivals, museums, botanical gardens, nature centers, parks, schools, and conferences from Canada to the Caribbean.
Couple notable places being the American Museum of Natural History in New York and the Royal Ontario Museum and he's even trained rangers at the National Park Service. Doug's written several books and authored lots of CDs, including Woods Lore, Wild Woods Wisdom, Wild Roots, which is a forager's guide to wild edible medicinal roots, tubers, corms and rhizomes most recently swarm tree of honeybees honeymoons and the tree of life. Doug's programs concerts and workshops are all listed on his awesome website. You're gonna have to check that out with, you really just gotta look at all these engaging products and programs that he has at DougElliott.com. And that's DougElliott.com. Doug, welcome.
Thanks. I'm glad to be a part of this program here.
Oh, well, thank you very much. And so did you say earlier when I was talking to you earlier today, you're going out like mushroom hunting or something today or what were you doing?
Well, we're always always have our eye out for mushrooms. Yeah.
I was just I just it's interesting. I just just came back from a storytelling program in the Eastern part of the state and on the way back, I just I just saw a little swampy area in a piney woods and I just thought, oh, I can't I just can't pass this up. So I made a U-turn and pulled back and found probably the biggest oyster mushrooms I ever found on a fallen gum log I think. And they were like eight inches across and they were very impressive. We've been eating them for two or three days. And then we have a friend over here, who raises stropharia, the wine cap mushrooms.
And he bought the spawn and he put it in some wood chip beds and they were producing so lushly that he called us up and said, look, I'm going to make my beds a little smaller, so I don't have to step into them to pick my mushrooms. If you want to come and get the edges of it and you can put them in you can make a chip bed ourselves. So we had some wood chips and so we just made a chip bed and we laid this mycelium in there Mhmm. And, and then covered it up and we're we have high hopes.
Now, should people if they're I haven't personally. There's a couple of kind of mushrooms I know that I that in my area in the northwest, I picked.
I I was with someone. I I knew what it was. I'm always a little, like, uh-oh. Like, is is there things people should should people just the first time when they're looking out for mushrooms kinda go with someone who knows what they're doing?
Well, of course of course, that's best thing, you know. But again, sort of like you say, you don't have to know a lot about mushrooms or a lot of mushrooms to know one or two good ones.
And and, you know, when I when I first the first time I ever ran into someone who actually knew mushrooms, it was interesting because I was living up in New England and, and this friend of mine said, this lady came by and asked if she could pick the mushrooms off the stump in front of my house. And, I said, did you find out who she was? Does she knew him? You know, yeah, well, she wanted to pick those mushrooms to eat.
And well, I didn't know mushrooms that well. I was like you, a little bit afraid of mushrooms. And and, and so she said, yes. Italian lady here, and I got her name.
I I got her number here. So we called her up and she she said, can we bring some mushrooms over and you tell us what they're good to eat or not? And she said, well, sure. I'll tell you what I know, she said.
And, and we we ran out in the back in the woods and just picked every mushroom we could find. Part of this whole basket was probably varieties of mushrooms, you know. And she kinda went through them and, no, I don't know that one. Don't know that one.
Now I think the Polish eat this one, but we don't. And then, I know I don't know that one, and I don't know that one. She didn't know any of the mushrooms in the basket, but she just knew these oyster mushrooms. She knew one or two kinds.
And because of that, she could eat lots of mushrooms.
And so that's the good news.
And so with a good field guide and it always helps to join a mushroom group if you really want to get into it. But, with a good field guide, you know, you can learn three or four that are that are safe and abundant.
Right. It's always an area that's just fascinated me that I just have yet really to spend the time and get into, you know. So I I like I said, it's one like the chanterelles and morels, like, those are easy to identify. You know what time of year abundant.
But other than that, you know, it's Yes.
And not only are they edible, but of course they're medicinal and they're nutritive and they're immune stimulants And we usually keep there's a lot of we usually keep a few mushrooms in the wintertime particularly simmering on the back burner some of the Ganoderma, the Ling Chi, the Reishi mushrooms, which are so valued in Asia. And we usually try to keep a little of that going, has a slightly bitter flavor and then often we mix a little chaga, which is a mushroom that every Russian knows and grows on birches in the high elevations in the North.
And so we keep those going and they're supposed to be there's all sorts of data that talks about how their immune stimulants, they stimulate the immune system and their anti cancer. And so it seems like it tastes good.
And so we kind of party on them when we can.
Oh, great. Well, alright. Well, thanks for sharing that with us.
That was fascinating when I heard them, like, oh, that sounds like fun. I wanna go, you know. So you're you're there in the Blue Ridge Mountains in North Carolina. Is that right?
Yeah. That's true.
Are you are you from there?
I'm originally from Maryland.
Oh, okay.
And Maryland Maryland has a has a little bit has a little panhandle. It's in the mountains. But I was mostly raised in the Chesapeake region.
And, and it was a great place to grow up because it was sort of before it had turned into an intensive suburbia.
And there was saltwater where saltwater met freshwater.
So there were places where we could go and catch catfish and sunfish and there's also a place where we could catch striped bats and bluefish all within all on this, within a mile or two of each other. And so it was a great place to grow up and it was a lot of swamps and a lot of diversity.
So that's so that's really, like, because, you you know, is that obviously is the place where you got your passion for for nature, and all. And did you have a a mentor like a a grandma or parents that were kinda showed you some tricks and things?
Or you just kinda one of those kids who were just out playing and just got bit Well, I just I always was just like a like a you know, I was sort of born with it, this this passion for for critters and nature and and all that.
And and my parents, thank goodness, were were very understanding and my mother let me keep snakes and she really liked it when I brought wildflowers home for the wildflower garden. And my dad was an engineer and he could and he is a very practical guy, so he could he knew how to handle boats and he knew about fishing and he knew about wood and woodworking and things like that. So he was pretty much supportive of all that, plus he was a good storyteller. He was from the Deep South, my mom was from the North. They compromised on Maryland.
And I have a strong New England New England roots and strong Louisiana and Southern roots too.
Wow. So the storytelling, yeah, really comes from the southern part of so that's where I was gonna I was wondering where your knack for storytelling is he a musician too?
Is your mom a musician or did you just Oh, that that not not so much.
I mean, he did he did play play drums in the LSU marching band.
But I'm sort of a backdoor musician. I play the harmonica, they only have ten holes and that's a tune to me. And so so with that, that works fine.
Easy to carry around too.
Yeah. Yeah. Easy to carry. Right. That's why I started. I figured if I could carry a tune by whistling, maybe if I had an instrument that was easy to carry as a whistle, maybe I could learn to play it.
Now now where did you start to, you know, kind of combine this, passion for nature and plants with the storytelling? Because I just find that so unique. I when I when I've seen you at the, like, at the International Herb Symposium last year or watched your video on, on your website, we, I I, you know, I just hear that and I'm just like, wow, you know, it's just such a unique voice that you have in teaching. And is that just something you kind of stumbled upon your own voice or is that a natural thing?
Or So I think so.
To to me to me, I think think what what hit me, I guess, we probably should start back there. Mhmm.
I tried to go to school because I was so interested in the natural world. I tried to study biology and somehow or another, they kept saying you had to have chemistry and you have math to get a good science degree.
And I didn't have a very good head for that, and that was really a struggle. And so I ended up majoring in art. And then I got out of school and there I was with a liberal arts degree, with an art major, talk about employable, you know. And so I had access to an old family house up in New England.
My grandmother said I could stay there at the house if I would just watch over it and pay the land taxes. And so then I realized here I'm an artist trying to make a living and as long as I could not could not spend money, as long as I didn't spend money, then no one would tell me what I had to do. And I would give me as much freedom as possible. And and so so I realized I had to grow a garden and had to just do everything I could to try to supplement my food.
And I tried to grow this garden and all these weeds came up in the garden and then somebody gave me a Yule Gibbons stalk in the wild asparagus book and I realized that the weeds that were in the garden were edible and that they were a whole lot easier to grow than the vegetables. And some of them were more nutritious than the vegetables I was trying to grow. And that sort of that sort of put a change on me. And then then I realized because I realized, okay.
Well, I know most of the birds, and I know most of the trees, and I know most of the butterflies and the reptiles and things like that, but I don't really know all these wildflowers. So I so I got a wildflower guide. And I started going out trying to just trying to look at the look at the wildflowers. I had a Peterson Field guide.
They identify the flower by the they identify the plant by the color of the flower. Alright. That sounds simple enough. You got a yellow flower, go out there and look in the yellow section.
And, so I I can remember being out there in the backyard and just trying to trying to look at just the ones that are in bloom.
So that kind of limits the field of study.
I was having trouble remembering them. I couldn't remember from one day to the next. I can remember going out there, there was this little flower, I looked it up in the book and like, oh, that's Saint John's Wort. I remember that name. I looked that up yesterday, and I had created no relationship with the plant.
And I couldn't even but the name stuck because it had such an interesting name.
Well, then I realized, okay, now that's part of the way that I can learn these plants is by starting to understand the names and where the names come from. And then I started talking to any elder, anyone who knew herbs and in those days particularly, it was the only people that really had a relationship with herbs generally were old country people.
And of course, any of those old country people, any of them that had anything to say about plants, had all kinds of stories about other things too.
And, and once I learned the stories that went along with the plants or whatever aspects of the natural world I was interested in at the time, helped me remember it.
And so the stories are kind of what would give us a hook. We're a psychically our human psyche is hooked into story. That's really how we make sense of our world. All these things happen to you every day, you go out into the world and all these things happen.
And someone says, well, what did you do today? Well, when you start telling them, what you're doing is you're telling a narrative. A narrative is old as the human psyche. And so that's sort of how the stories come into it.
And of course, I look for that's what I look for is for stories or songs that have botanical or or, natural history references.
Well, since you, mention it, how about I'm just gonna pick a plant. Dandelion. Got a story song?
Sorry to the song. Lord have mercy.
You're a good one.
So, you know, you've seen those jagged leaves on that plant, those jagged toothed leaves, are you the French? They looked at that, and they said it looks like the jaws of a lion.
And, and you see those teeth? And so they called it Donte de Leon. Right? Tooth of the lion.
And us Americans, we never could speak French very well, so we just called them dandelions.
And that's how we got the name dandelions from the French Tonta Lyon. Now you may go talk to a modern French speaker and say, look, we heard this guy on the herb program and he claimed that that that we got the name dandelion from Donte Lion. That's the name you call him. And they probably say, well, that's the old name for the plant. But what we call them now is And translates out sort of loosely to mean piss in the bed.
And what that refers to is the diuretic quality of the dried leaves. If you wanted a general diuretic, you would just take either dried dandelions, make them into a tea or sometimes even put them in capsules and you could just take dried dandelion leaves in a capsule and it's a gentle diuretic.
Now what's interesting about the whole thing is dandelion is one of the most nutritious plants that we have on the continent. It's one of the highest natural sources of potassium. It's high in vitamin A, near the top of the charts, also vitamin C, all kinds of trace minerals in it.
And if you go to a physician and the physician says you need a diuretic medication, a regular allopathic physician, they might give you a medication to that was diuretic, but with that diuretic medication comes the potassium supplement, because you've because if you're going to lose a lot of fluids, you have to keep your electrolytes balanced and the potassium helps you do that.
And so here's a plant whose full name is pee in the bed and it's also and it's a general diuretic and it's also one of the highest natural sources of potassium.
So to me that's such a lesson, such a lesson that there it is. It's all kind of in combination in the natural world. And often when you take herbs, there's a synergy that happens and there's a real balance.
And you can use standard lines for you can take the roots and it's like a classic liver medication, sort of a liver stimulant, liver tonic, and you can blow the seeds, you make wishes, you can make salads or soups or greens, cooked greens out of the dandelion greens. You can roast the roots and make coffee, dandelion coffee. You can pick the flowers. They have nectar in them and they also have lots of lots of carotenes in the flowers, and and you can make dandelion wine out of them. Got that going.
What's that?
I got some of that going.
That going. Well, alright. I wish we could, wish I was in the studio there with you. We could have a little bit. Uh-huh.
And, you know, probably the simplest way to to sort of celebrate Dandelions and my favorite flowers in the sunshine or during a shower. Dandelion, they'd be popping up everywhere.
They don't care. Dandelion, they never take a vacation. They always popping up without invitation.
Dandelion, there's always enough to share.
Well, I went to the store where the gardeners go to buy me some dandelion seeds.
The man behind the counter said, son, don't you know? You don't have to plant them, they grow like a weed.
Dandelions, they don't have to be planted. Why does everyone take them for granted? Dandelions, they're special as you and me.
Well, you wake up in the morning, you're feeling kinda low. You'll get up and go. It's gone. You need some vitamins, some remedies, some tonic or some tea. Well, look out in your lawn.
You got dandelions. Buy the bunch of the bowlful. Eat them all up. They'll make you feel soulful. Dandelions. As special as you and me.
Dandelions, they're good for your liver. Eat them all up. They make you jump up and shiver. Dandelions, they'll make a long liver out of of you. Dandelions, blow those seeds and make wishes for money, world peace, or lots of sweet kisses.
Alright. We're all clapping.
Here all those people There you go.
That one had that was just that was just lovely to have to find that song. That song was recorded on a Gentle Wind recording, and, it was a children's album and, and I made up a medicinal verse there to go with it. That's when you talk about Dan and Lazyd, we have to be holistic knowing.
Well, you know, we spontaneously break into song on our mentor a lot, you know. So it fits right.
Well, good. Good.
You even won a championship or something once and you you're still content or Great, man.
It's good line on the resume, didn't it?
Alright. Made it on there. When I download the CD. Oh, well, that's great.
That one didn't get recorded.
That's wow. That's great.
Is it on now is it on one of your, CDs that you have on?
That's what I mean.
It's on it's on the Bound for Carolina CD, which is the all music CD.
Nice. Because you also have one like, the the Crawdads Doodlebugs and Creasy Greens.
And that has a CD.
Great. And that has a store a CD and a book component. What's that's that? Like, I I just love the, playfulness and it's almost like all these are written for all age all age kids.
Well, that that one that one kind of is, you know, it's something that's suitable to kids, but it's really lots of lots of adult material on it too. And then you try to make it so that so that one doesn't exclude the other.
And that it has stories about Doodlebugs, which are antlions and it has I found an old song about them and it has a lot about creasy greens, creasy greens are wintercress.
Even out west you have a I think a Native American crest they call it, the barbaraa genus.
And they are a favorite green in the South. They are like one of the mustard family and Southerners are really, really understand the value of greens and particularly with the mild winters they can grow various kinds of greens all winter. So that's a really nice thing about being in a southern climate.
Because even though it gets cold and freezing, you can there's lots of hardy greens that can take it and wintercrests or creasy greens are one of them.
This must be fascinating where you live. I mean, the cult there there just must be so much culture and information and all that you just must find, just in where you live, as far as Herbalore and everything?
I mean People people people people say, well, so how do you choose this part of North Carolina to be here because I've been here for thirty some years. And I think in my travels and particularly for a number of years, I went to I used to just gather herbs and I had a Volkswagen van and I had drying racks in the Volkswagen van. And for those of you who are herb gatherers, you know that one of the best places to dry herbs if you don't have any other situation is in the car with the window cracked open just so it doesn't get too hot in there.
But in the summertime when the sunshine through and get that little greenhouse effect going in the car, that's a great way to dry herbs. So I would dry herbs. I would travel and I would go to folk festival.
And, and I would, and I would set up a booth of herbs, teas, and old time remedies.
Oh. And and it was it was sort of like pre Celestial Seasoning days.
Mhmm.
And, And so I would make these herb blends and for teas and people were just starting to get aware that, hey, it could be is these herbs could be good for you and plus it gave me a way to reference to research these things because by the time I because these are all would see. I would mostly go to traditional music festivals. And so they would have all kinds of elder folks that were good at music.
And many country people, if they know old banjo tunes or old fiddle tunes, they also know a whole lot about the natural world where they live.
And, and usually by the time it was through, anyone at that whole festival that had anything to say about herbs would come over there and not hear from them by the time it was through.
And so so and so in many ways that that gave me gave me an excuse and a way to talk to someone, get to know them a little bit. Can I come and talk to you or where do you live, do you live near here, can I come and visit and we talk more about these plants? And so and many of these festivals were in the Southern Appalachians or in the South. And so that sort of got me into the area.
And then I realized that really we have the pike the peak, sort of an epicenter of biodiversity because we have I mean, in the Carolinas, for example, I mean, you have, five thousand foot mountains, which is nothing to you all about out west, but at least they're climbable.
There's spruce fir forest on the top of these mountains. And then you can and within within forty or fifty miles, you can go to cotton fields like you'd see in in in, Mississippi.
So this is all within this within this this tiny range, you know, within within fifty or a hundred miles, you can you can get to a lot of different kinds of climates. And so, so great for biodiversity and because the mountains are kind of rugged and they were kind of wet and kind of back in that they were less touched by the modern world than a lot of places.
And so because of that, there was much stronger herbal tradition than you'd find in many places. They believe they weren't didn't know their herbs. They knew if they weren't using their herbs, they knew what grandma used them for.
Right. Right. Did did you have any opportunities to, like, meet an elder and just have them tell some of their secret stuff? Do they pass on anything that their favorite things? Like, ever have any moments like that?
Well, I mean, yeah, I sort of I sort of apprentice myself to one one wonderful gentleman called named Theron Edwards, who's still around. And we've kind of moved a little apart physically, but I still talk to him regularly and occasionally see him.
And he just he was some people had told me about him. They said he knew a lot about plants and made medicines and stuff. And, so I went over to meet him, and we we just hit it off great in a really nice way. At the time, I was pretty much itinerant.
He said, I got that old cabin down there. You you know, my wife and I, when we first moved in here, we stayed in that cabin. You can stay in that cabin if you want. We'd go with any time we wanted.
I just thought, oh my goodness. What would you charge me? I he said, oh, well, you know, just have me hold a goat every now and then or something.
And I stayed I stayed there for a couple of years, and and, I still would travel and do my do my circuit, but but it gave me a base and I learned lots from him. I don't know if there's any particular secret secrets, but I learned a lot of plans from him and it was just wonderful because because, you know, we kinda knew the same plants, but he knew them by different names and he knew lots of uses for them.
And and would you would you find method wise, were they, like, the remedies more tea or that kind of based? Or were people doing alcohol infused? Like, did you see something, like, unique in the area, like, with remedy making that you hadn't seen in other places?
Or Well, I see. I don't I don't know if I don't know if his his, his techniques were, you know, were pretty were were any, like, I mean, he basically just basically boiled herbs in water mostly.
Now and then he put some stuff in alcohol, but alcohol, you know, sometimes they expect me.
So alcohol wasn't always the best thing.
And he did things like this. So there's a little tiny plant called Virginia snakeroot and it's one of the Aristolochias.
And it has a long tradition. It used to be gathered gathered many pounds of it used to be gathered. And yet when you find the plant, I mean, they're only like, you know, if a big one would be a foot tall and, and, you know, it has like ten leaves on it. But most of them just, you know, just have a few little sprigs with, you know, five or six or eight leaves on it.
And, and you dig this little plant up and it has this very aromatic root. But the root is tiny. It's just little it's just this little cluster of tiny rootlets. I mean, you know, like you could you could stuff it all in a thimble.
And, and you think, now how do you see gather this by the pound.
And, and he'd say, now this is this is good for a headache, he said he'd say. And he go for he he said, I always keep a little bit of little bit of Virginia snake root.
And, and he'd and he'd and he had it like in a little film canister, like a little medicine bottle. Yeah. And he said, now if you get your headache, you just open this up and you sniff on it.
So, I mean, I guess you call that aromatherapy, you know. But but to me, it's also a conscientious herb gathering because you just the plant is not common and you could and you just it would be really kind of destructive just keep pulling up and trying to cook it up into something. And, he he said it would help a headache and it seemed like I tried it once or twice. It seemed like it helped a little bit.
Right. Right.
That was interesting. There was one there was one herb he called Angelico.
And, and and I'd heard other older mountain people talk about Angelico. Now, it sounds like he's saying Angelica. Uh-huh. And and it's not but it's not Angelica.
But he called Angelico. And I even showed him Angelica. I said, that's what we talking about. No.
No. Angelico.
And, and, we get that. Now that's just good for everything. And he would always try to get a mess of Angelico. Well, I finally found the Angelico and finally guys finally identified it. Found out it was its scientific name is Logusticum canadensis.
And Logusticum is the same genus as the Western OSHA root.
And I realized that this is our Eastern OSHA.
And then when I got out West and I started looking started to find find find the roots, I remember being up way high in the mountains in Utah and seeing this feathery looking plant and smelling it and think this is God, this is ocean, this is amazing, this is it, you know. And then then going down into Southern Utah and and and a real woodsman was taking me out and around and he says, oh, look, here's our OSHA. And it was a whole different plant. And then I realized that there are lots of species of Western OSHA too. There are different species. They're all Logusticum.
And so to me, that was kind of an interesting link because because here's these plants that are the same genus used by many different cultures across the continent.
Mhmm. Now I imagine that, like, folks like him were also the link, between the Native American uses in the area as well.
Right. He he claimed some Indian roots too. He'd say, my granddad is Indian.
Uh-huh. So I know all this stuff. But he also he also attributed other people. He he had other names, people that showed him how to make different medicines.
Oh, wow. Wow. Yeah. Speaking of roots, I just wanna mention everyone too that when I first heard of you a while back, when I got your book Wild Roots and, and I'm looking through it and I was and the thing that struck me when I saw it in the bookstore or wherever I bought it, you know, back then when we bought books at bookstores, was was that, oh, I never thought to dig them up.
See what's underneath.
Yeah. Well, what what happened on that? And that was that was just during those years, those itinerant years when I was, when I was traveling around and it just that was just my passion. All of a sudden, when I found out when I found out that you could use all these plants, it just it just blew me away.
The idea that, the more you study it, the fewer plants you can't find a use for. I mean, it's astounding. And to me, that just to me, I guess, there's this I guess it's a spiritual quest of looking for points of contact with the natural world. I always say that the best way to understand the creator is to study the creation.
And so that's just been my passion.
It's my passion and that's my rationalization for it.
And the idea that not only can you catch these fish or you eat them or you can go catch a snake and watch it squirm or you can go look at butterflies and you can do this, but here's these plants and you can you can you can eat certain ones of them and you can make medicine out of certain ones. I mean, certain ones have fruit, certain ones will kill you and certain ones will you can roll them up and smoke them.
All these different uses for these things, so it's more points of contact with this incredible miracle that we're living as a part of. And and so that just that just became my passion was was any plan I could find a use for and anyone who would talk to me about them. And, and so let's see. So this is all coming around to something here.
Sorry. Take your time.
Oh, so the roof still so so I end up I end up down in the in the in the Southern Appalachian Mountains and started talking to these old timers and and, oh, yes. Ginseng. You can find ginseng out in here. I went out in the woods.
I found ginseng. I dug up these roots, and they were so astounding looking. You know, these little humanoid forms, and some of them looked like they were dancing, and some of them looked like they were just these these strange forms. And dug up the Solomon's seal root and just seeing all those old stem scars.
It looked like this incredible creeping monster, you know, like some huge worm with all these little little scales and scars on it and all these rootlets sticking out the side. And I just thought these are so astounding. And I was with them, I was visiting some friends who who at least she was an artist and I've been had a lot of art training and so I just started sketching these roots. I put a little light on one side of it, started sketching them, and these drawings came out that they kind of made You did the sketches too?
And, and so the and then and then I just started drawing I draw through several different kinds of roots, and then I thought, now now what I got? I got these pictures of roots. Well, at the time, I had this herb booth, right, where I had all these herbs and teas and all time remedies. I had a friend over the printer and said, oh, that only do all we make root stationery.
So so, so he printed them up into those little root note cards. And I had about I had about five or about four or six of them, I can't remember. And I put them in little packets and I could sell them, you know, along with my earth and things like that. And then somebody came along and said, oh, these are beautiful.
I know a little publisher who would love to do a book about these kind of things. I said, oh, yeah. Right. Okay.
Well, here, we'll give them a pack of his root card. Next thing you know, a letter came in the mail and said back when we write used to write letters, said, you know, we understand you're an expert on roots. How would you like to do it? We sell you drawings.
How would you like to do a book for us? I was astounded. I figured by the time I wrote a book about Ruth, I would be an expert.
And so that was that gave me credibility at a very young age and well, not very well, relatively young age, I think it still was before I was thirty that book came out, but with my lifestyle, not being relatively homeless and living in a Volkswagen van with jars of herbs, it gave me a little more credibility.
And the only thing that happened is it came out it was originally it came out in nineteen seventy six. That means this book has been out. It's still in print thirty years later. Can you believe that? And and and all I think is when it first came out, it was called Roots.
It came out the same year as Alex Haley's book.
People go, oh, you wrote a book. What's it called? Oh, never mind.
And nobody ever nobody ever asked me for a movie movie rights to my book. I guess the plot was a little thin, you know.
No. No. No. It was just too dirty. Get it? Yeah. Too dirty. Yeah. Sorry.
That's right. Two underground.
Two underground. Oh, we could come up with puns all day on this.
Yeah. Well, how's it going? I never heard that one all this time.
Hey. Leave it to me. Hey.
You said for this whole interview just for that.
Oh, yeah. It is great. But thinking of roots, like, well, I just kinda thinking roots and, I don't know. I'm kinda I always had this picture of the folks that, you know, living in that area. A lot of tonics and things like that, was, like any kind of the people kinda brew their own root beer out of roots they dug up in that area too before the, you know, the sugary stuff kinda came out?
Well You know what?
Or I always think of always interested to buy traditional root beer recipes and where that all came from and and all.
Let's see. I would think yeah. I don't think there was you know, I think people would make certain teas.
But when it came to brewing, they were generally interested in alcohol.
Right. Right. The stilts.
And, and then, you know, but of course of course, you know, and then and here's the other thing, you know, okay. So grandpa living way back up in his cabin, way up there in the mountains, off the grid, before he had a term grid, Living out there and he needs to have some medicine, he needs to have some tonics. He's getting older, needs to have any kind of strengthening time as he can. So he goes out and he gets him a little Ginseng, gets him a little wild cherry bark for his throat, gets him a little bit of goldenseal or yellow root for his bitter tonic for his stomach, brew some of these herbs altogether, bruise them all up, make a tea, she wants to sip a little lot of every now and then.
Well, now, now, you know, take a place without refrigeration and how long is that brew going to stay good if you leave it sitting on the counter?
It will stay good for a day or three at the most.
But if it's warm weather, that's going to ferment. It's going to get it's going to get kind of sour and get kind of kind of nasty.
So grandpa just, you know, pours a little bit of white liquor in that.
Alright? Now that'll keep it from souring.
And of course, anyone who's ever made an herbal tincture knows that the thing about an herbal tincture is that certain medicinal agents in the plant are water soluble and other medicinal aspects of the plant are alcohol soluble.
And so if there's some alcohol and water in the brew that you're making, you're more likely to get a stronger medicinal dose out of that. So and a little bit of liquor makes you feel better sometimes. Mhmm. And so to me, what what that is is a real celebration of realizing that hold it, that, that this everything about this works.
And many of them and that's why the folk processes can be so successful and why they're so long lasting.
Right, right. Why they've stuck around all these years.
And so there you go. So that and so a lot of times people would put various kinds of roots and things and put them in with some alcohol and that would preserve the roots and also make some medicine they could take and we work out good. A friend of mine, he went this this one fella, I know he got he when he when he started realizing you could make herbal tinctures and all like that, he just thought that was exciting. So he went and he found the local moonshiner and he got some moonshine and he just started brewing up all these things and he was so excited about all these different brews. He brewed yellow root tinctures for stomach management and then he's doing some and then he started doing mint tinctures. He did get put alcohol over a bunch of mint. He says, I call it corn to mint.
So anyhow, just little local corn there.
Oh, that's great. So I'm imagining another another plan. I mean, I'm thinking you're you're doing a lot of these, you know, storytelling gigs and you're out there.
And and, I'm thinking that if you're going up and down the East Coast, now we don't we don't really have any growing where I live right here because it's a little too wet, but I'm imagining you you talk about, our friend poison ivy quite a bit, Oh, yeah.
Yeah. Well, yeah, you know, yeah. I guess you got poison oak out there, right?
We have no no, you know, we just have nothing. We can go you can go to the other side of the mountains and it's dry and we you have it and you can go down into maybe into Oregon and find some, but up in Western Washington, it's just too wet.
Oh, I tell you. Land is oh, it just says clean living up there.
We had no poisonous snakes either.
No jiggers. I don't know what y'all do for recreation up there. Cougars. Cougars. Cougars. Okay. Right.
Right.
Well, there you go. I guess our big man eaters are mosquitoes.
You know? No. All these folks have a cougar or two around here, but I don't know.
So let's see. So so what was it? Oh, so Poison Ivy. Poison Ivy. Poison Oak.
I guess I guess, I was reading in the, you'll give us book one time. He said the West Coast loggers would go out in the spring of the year. They're working out in these poison oak tickets and what they do is they got in the spring of the year and they just grab a tiny little bud when it just a little bud is just forming and they eat it. Next day they eat another one.
Next day they eat another one. The next day they start the leaves start to come out. They do a tiny leaf and another little tiny leaf. And then by the middle of the summer, they're eating a big cluster of leaves and it would immunize them.
And, and so so I did that. I tried that. And I used to get poison ivy, and I don't anymore.
And, that was I was pretty excited that that I really wasn't getting it. And in fact, you know, my family even will say, well, you know, come will you weed that poison ivy out of the trail there? And I'll just take it. I'll be just doing that today.
Pulling poison ivy with my bare hands. And and, you know, again, I'm I'm sort of respectful of it, and I don't I don't flaunt it. But, I don't seem to get it much. And, and I told a few a couple of friends of mine. I had this one friend that was very sensitive to poison ivy. And and, and, when my friends tried it, they cut one of them and ended up in the hospital with systemic poison ivy. It's a former friend of mine and And so maybe I was at the end of a sensitivity cycle and maybe them that need it the most, it doesn't work for.
So I think that what I recommend for most people, particularly people that are highly zen to the poison ivy, they should probably just probably work with the homeopathic dose, which is the Rooftox, which is a homeopathic remedy, which is sort of a non has the essence of poison ivy in it without the poison ivy something like that.
And so that seems to be the way. Some people go, well, what good is this plant that you see some little kid all blistered and oozing, itching, irritated and red and think, why is what good is this plant? Well, it turns out that it's the berries and all feed all so many kinds of birds in the wintertime and they're really hot, really very nutritious and the birds don't seem to have a problem with it. I've seen woodpeckers and bluebirds eating it, the deer browse on it in the spring. Some people say, let your goats browse on it and then drink the goat milk and That'll immunize you.
But, you know.
Now now, you I'm I'm I'm thinking if if you don't have a song for Poison Ivy, you must have one for another song you like to sing about some other Oh, okay.
You want one little verse of that?
He comes on like a rose. And then you guys do the dent to dent part.
Okay.
Like a rose.
Everybody knows.
She'll get you in Dutch.
Then then you can look but you better not touch poison ivy.
Poison ivy.
To go to the whole dog. That was nineteen fifty five, the Coasters.
Oh, really?
Yes. Great. When I was a little kid, I remember hearing them sing that.
Oh, and who who would have who would have thunk it?
No. There you go. Ethnobotanical, you know.
Ethnobotanical, whatever kind of style music they were.
So botanical top forty. That's that's no botany there. Yeah. Another another top forty song. In fact, I did this weekend at the Storytelling Festival, there I was, I had like about a fifteen minute slot. Sometimes it's hard to tell a fifteen minute story because you want to I'd rather tell an hour long story than a fifteen minute one, but just because it gives you more time to develop things.
And I was walking around the ground, it was at this beautiful old plantation and there was pokeweed coming up. And, you know, pokeweed is actually considered by some by in some sources considered to be a poisonous plant. But in the South, when it first comes up out of the ground, it's considered to be edible.
And, and it's edible and delicious.
And but it's usually cooked, it's processed in a couple of different waters.
And the root is considered to be toxic, but used by herbalist in tiny amounts in a tincture form as a lymphatic, detoxifier or cleanser.
And, and there was there was there was a song recorded by Elvis Presley celebrating poke weed about a young about a young girl who who would go out and was written by Tony Joe White who was a sharecropper son. He's one of the swamp rockers in the sixties.
Wow. And, you know, and he he he wrote a song celebrating poke salad. So that's what I did as part of my fifteen minute routine is I went to pick a few plants and told stories about the plants and poke salad and then and the song that sort of came out, it came out something like this.
Down in Louisiana where the alligators grow so old, Maine.
There lives a girl out. Swear to the world. She makes them alligators look tame.
Well, poke salad Annie, poke salad Annie, gator got your granny. And then your party's gator got your granny. Everybody thought it was a shame, but a mama wasn't working on the chain gang. Mean, vicious woman now.
Every evening bouts up a time, Annie come down to my truck patch. Pick yourself a mezza poke salad, carry it on home in a toastack. Poke salad, Annie. Poke salad, Annie.
Gator got your granny. Gator got your granny. Everybody thought it was a shame, but her mama wasn't working on the chain gang. I mean, this woman now.
And there's other verses about her, no count brothers and all that. But, basically, it was about this about this Southern girl, the neighbor of Tony Joe when he was raised up and she basically kind of held that family together by, by gathering wild greens and things like that. She come around the edge of the garden patch and just just pick all the old wild pokeweed.
Absolutely. Take it back, book it for the family.
That'd just be fascinating, a whole, CD of, herbal folk, you know, like that. Like, there's another project for you. Or is that or did that or did that already?
I don't think there's there's a lot of it on a lot of my CDs. Alright. Thought about it.
So you know let's move let's move on to, the most recent project that you have out, Swarm Tree of Honeybees, Honeymoons, and Tree of Life. Now, so well, what what what about that? What's the tree, you know, where where where why did you come up with that book and where is that?
Well, I guess I guess, I let's see. I guess it just it just was a was an accumulation of you spend enough time in nature, there's so many different things are so inspiring and sometimes epiphanies come with it all.
And so I would just sort of write about these things and it's sort of a collection of these kind of writings. I mean, just, the book starts off with me up in a with me climbing up in a tree on my the year that I turned fifty, I was fifty feet up in this tree and that's when fifty thousand bees fell on my head.
And and and I was up there trying to catch a swarm of bees and trying to catch them, but I shook the tree at the wrong time and they just landed on my head and then the swarm all flew off and kind of left me there in this tree contemplating the absurdity of human endeavor.
And to use that as a vantage point from which to look out over my little homestead and look at my wife out in the garden and my son playing with her and playing around out there and watching all the activities and thinking about, so where am I? Here I am halfway between heaven and earth, halfway between birth and death and what a place to look at the world. And then I'd sort of go into different things, try and look at beehives and start to realize that they're kind of metaphorical for human society in some ways and then going from there to to what kind of what kind of, kind of spiritual type of lessons can you learn in nature and just things that have kind of worked for me.
No matter what. Like one time I was I had a group of about a dozen people something like that. And we were in northern, Indiana. We were walking walking down by this lake, and and, and and we and we came into this little patch of trees.
And, the trees had large tropical looking leaves with the little drip tips on there. Mhmm. And they, and and and we love and you know where, oh, where was Ranger Doug's Herb Walk?
Oh, where, oh, where was the Ranger Doug's herb walk? Oh, where, oh, where was the Ranger Doug's herb walk? We were way down yonder in the Paw Paw Patch.
And the Paw Paw's are America's largest native fruit and they're the one tropical one northern member of a tropical family of plants. There's all these other plants down in the tropics, maybe some of you or some of your listeners have been down into the tropics and tasted maybe on the Caribbean islands you tasted the soursop or down in Latin America you tasted the cherimoya or the guanabana.
And but here in Noble County, Indiana, we were about to get a taste of the tropics.
And we weren't exactly filling our pockets with pawpaws, but we found one perfectly ripe pawpaw.
And now even though even though some pawpaws grow to be more than a pound in size, this one was more like a little stubby cucumber about three or four inches long. And, I smelled it and I could just tell it was ripe. And so I had a little a little bark backpack and I laid that down using it as a cutting board. I thought, oh, you got these thirteen people here, all of us together.
And I get enough slices out of it. So I sliced this pawpaw down. And, and sure enough, I thought I got enough slices big black seeds in there. I kind of cut around the seeds.
I passed them out, and we'd all had a piece of this pawpaw. And we were sort of transported by the the creamy succulents, the tangy sweetness of this fruit. We were sort of it was like almost like mind altering and, you know, it must have been a little bit mind altering because because I thought voices sort of came to me, and I I felt like I was some kind of minister who'd been in, like, been, like, in church or something. And I and I found myself words like, take, eat, this is my body, which is given to you.
Do this in remembrance of me.
And I thought those are words that I heard in church. Those are those are Christ's words in the Bible. I think it's Luke twenty-two nineteen twenty nineteen.
And I realized that here and more words started coming, but here in this Indiana banana patch, they were just coming on strong and these more words kept coming on like whosoever believeth in this shall not perish and they shall have everlasting life. And I realized that this is the message of the creator, the earth mother, of of God, whatever you want to say. This is the message that every bite, every nibble, every meal we eat, every time we drink, every berry we nibble is a gift of creation, is a part of the body of the creator.
And I realized that every time we sniff a flower, nibble a berry, eat a meal, have a drink, that we are partaking in the sacred sacrament.
And let me tell you, that was quite a paw paw.
Yeah.
Thanks for sharing that. That is that's I've I've yet to, try a pawpaw off the tree like that. So wow.
You know, Doug is something if you choose to remember.
Those pawpaws get ripe around the middle of September. A A short forest tree with leaves soft and green, the fruit soft and creamy, a custard like cream with the, paw paw, two paw paw, three paw paw, four. I've eaten so many paw paws, can't eat anymore.
Awesome. It's always going on, you know.
Well, Doug, you know, I just wanna point out to everyone again that your site, doug elliott dot com, has a list of programs and workshops, concerts, whatever you can give. Also, upcoming events you'll be at. So please, everyone, go there as well as check out the books and CDs. And as always, on Herb Mentor Radio, we say, support your herbalist.
Go to their websites and buy the stuff. So go to doug elliott dot com. Before you go anywhere else, check it all out there. And, Doug, I just wanna thank you so much for spending time with us.
It's been a real honor, a real treat, and I can't wait to see you at, maybe the next international arms symposium or next time I'm back east.
Yeah. I'm due to be there, I think. Yeah. They've got it. Alright.
I'll be there too.
And then if you go there yourself, folks, you can go and get a book from Doug and have him sign it for you.
Alright. Thanks a lot. We'll see you there.
Take care, man.
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