This afternoon, it was supposed to rain a ton and then freeze hard, so on my lunch hour I grabbed my basket and scissors and my crutch, scurrying down to the park. I headed for where plantain always crowds up on the hill.
You harvest plantain to eat early in the season, but I’ve heard that you can harvest it any time of the year to collect and dry for a poultice, and this felt like my last chance at foraging this year.
(The Irish don’t believe in harvesting anything after Samhain; we’re to leave edibles for the Good Folk– or, to hear others tell it, because the Púca has spat on all the berries. But I am an arrogant American who thinks the rules don’t apply to her.)
I took pictures, a few videos, cheerfully narrating what I was doing as I harvested a bunch of plantain to bring home and dry.
I ran into a neighbor who bemoaned her lack of knowledge of herbs, saying that she hadn’t realized that plantain grew there, and how she wouldn’t have been able to identify it by those big leaves. I happily proselytized about educating yourself, and told her to just jump in there!
On the way home, a neighbor greeted me with joy at seeing greens in my basket, and we chatted about herbs and things.
“Wow!” she said. “I’d never have thought that was plantain. It looks like rhubarb!”
The rain started to pelt down, and I ran inside before the plantain got too wet as I was planning on drying it.
“What’s that?” asked my son.
“Plantain!” I said. “It’s for a poultice. I’m gonna dry it.”
“That is not plantain,” he said flatly.
So, I looked it up with my plant identification app.
Burdock. It was burdock.
The ROOTS of which are medicinal.
BWAAAAHAHAHAHAHA
Moral: when you’re still a beginner, make sure you have a good identification app!
The Practical Herbalist 
Leave a comment