What Wildcrafting Has Taught Me About Sustainability
By jim mcdonald
The first plant I wildcrafted was burdock. I was in college, living in an old farmhouse on 30 acres of once upon a time farm. That house, that land, was transformative in so many ways. I moved in a musician and songwriter, working and interning at rock and roll radio stations, but had been into the outdoors, hiking, paddling and backpacking for a number of years.
One of my roommates left a copy of an herb book out, and I picked it up and started reading. At the time, I knew very, very few plants by name. As Stephen Buhner once wrote, I basically broke them up into three categories: big ones called trees, medium-sized ones called bushes, and small ones called plants. This being the case, all the names in the book really meant nothing to me. I recognized dandelion, of course. And I thought I recognized pine, though at the time I probably (like a lot of people in my region) just called most conifers “pine” as a generic term.
But, as synchronicity would have it, I was walking back and forth through the Michigan State University Beal Botanical Garden on my way to and from classes all the time, and one day I looked and saw what I had previously just thought of as “the plant that’s growing by the door to the barn.” There was a little sign next to it that said, “burdock.” When I got home I looked burdock (Arctium lappa, A. minor) up in the book and, well, it seemed like it was pretty much good for everything. Evidently it was the root you used, so I found a little hand trowel, went out to the barn and started digging.
Of course many of you are snickering right now, knowing what at the time I didn’t: burdock has a deep taproot, which is rarely shorter than a foot, and might extend to over two feet. I didn’t know this, but found out as I dug, deeper and wider around the plant, expecting at each moment to find the bottom of this endless root. Eventually I was able to pull the root out of a very deep and very wide hole. It was massive. I carried it into the house, washed off the dirt, chopped some of it up, and made some tea. I do remember sitting there as I sipped it, waiting for something to happen.
This, though, is not really the way burdock works … though what I’ve come to realize, so many years later, is that those first sips of wild tea did do something. They started something, something that’s still unfolding as I write this.
There are several ways I like to think of this. One is that, rather than me finding a use for an herb, the herb found a use for me. Another is that it was in that moment that my interest in herbs really took root: when it became an interest in the herbs that grew around me, which was so much more interesting than those white boxes of Alvita tea that used to make up the herb section of health food stores.
While I did purchase some teas, some tinctures, and certainly a lot of bulk herbs at the local food co-op, I really jumped in to learning about the plants that grew around me and using those as the primary source of all the stuff I began making and offering to people. I didn’t grow very much stuff; I’m still not really impressive in any way as a gardener. I learned my land and came to rely on it as the source of most of the herbs I use. Over 25 years later, I still am.
But also:
Over 25 years later I think a lot about wildcrafting. About sustainability. About when to collect things and when to leave things. About when to not just leave things, but plant things. About how to teach wildcrafting and foraging with sustainability as a forethought, and not an afterthought.
When I first began learning this craft, there were a lot of herbalists talking about sustainable harvesting practices; I remember when the United Plant Savers was founded. But I really learned the most about sustainability and stewardship as I was collecting the plants I used.
I remember, one spring, sitting amidst a carpet of cranesbill, Geranium maculatum. It was a substantial patch of the herb, and it was all over the area I was harvesting in; one of the dominant plants in that habitat. If you’ve never seem them, cranesbill rhizomes are rather small, gnarly things; a few inches long, generally, but branching out into mats of rhizomes. Somewhere I had learned the practice of “dig the root but replant the crown,” and so I would cut the end of the rhizome with the growing shoot from the rest and replant it.
But as time went by, I saw that I could tell which plants I had harvested from because although I had dutifully replanted each, the leaves were drooping discernibly among their untouched siblings. I looked down at what I was doing. The rhizomes were firm and hardy, some of them actually just sitting atop the soil under the leaf litter. But the actual roots (rhizomes, though herbalists call them roots, are actually underground stems) were spread spaciously across the soil, and when I dug them up and replanted them, the roots were then all bunched up in the hole I dug, no longer reaching wide in the earth.
I’d read somewhere that an elf tends each patch of cranesbill, and perhaps it was an elf that said to me, “You don’t need to dig up the crown … just break off the rhizome a little ways behind the stem and collect the part you need.”
So I did. And right in front of me, as I continued to harvest, I saw the plants I collected in this manner all looking perfectly happy, with no discernible sign that I’d harvested from them. From that moment, that’s how I harvest rhizomes or roots whenever I can. It’s the only sustainable way to harvest our native Solomon’s seal, Polygonatum biflorum, which grows from thin, running rhizomes (as opposed to the clumping rhizomes of P. multiflorum and other larger species). When collecting wild yam (Dioscorea villosa) I uncover the rhizomes between emerging vines and clip the sections between. The same technique can be used to collect the roots connecting sassafras (Sassafras albidum) saplings.
Because roots store food for plant growth, it’s important to leave enough near the stem to feed the plant, but harvested in this manner, the actively growing part of the plant usually doesn’t show much impact from the harvest. But what’s more, in a few years the plant often establishes new vegetative growth where the rhizome or root was cut. This leads, over time, to more stems, leaves, flowers, fruit and — as a result — seed being produced, and I’ve seen time and again that plant populations harvested in this manner increase in the areas I harvest from.
Because the rhizomes/roots need to grow back at whatever rate they grow, you may need to find multiple stands of a plant to ensure regular harvest. Our local variety of Solomon’s seal, Polygonatum biflorum var. biflorum may grow less than an inch a year (you can count the knuckly stem scars to see how old the plant is). So, if I find a plant, trace down the stem, and uncover the rhizome, I may be able to harvest 8, 10, 12, or 15 years of its past life (always leaving 2-3 inches behind the growing stem to feed its continued growth).
I’ve done this and see plants thrive afterwards, but I can’t go back the next year and collect from the same plants. Or the year after. Or the year after that. For Solomon’s seal, I’m on a 7- to 8-year rotation of the places I harvest it from, so that when I come back to the same spot, I know the plants have had time to regrow rhizomes for me to harvest ethically. This is not just a practice of sustainability, it’s a practice of stewardship. And it connects me deeply to those plants, who I also visit and assess in the years between harvests.
Herbalists also, I feel, need to think about ethics and sustainability even when we’re considering plants that are decidedly abundant and in no seeming distress whatsoever. Just this week, I went out to collect mullein root (Verbascum thapsus), which is not only weedy but in some states considered a noxious weed. As mullein is a biennial, I generally collect the root from the fall of its first year into the spring of its second year; up until the stem starts growing upward from its basal rosette.
It might surprise people to know that, at least in Michigan were I live, first year mullein roots can be absolutely teeny, even under impressively sized basal rosettes. Like, 1/4″ to 3/8″ diameter, a couple inches long teeny. Maybe I’ll find some bigger, 1″ diameter roots, but on the whole they’re just wee things in my bioregion. If its weedy, though, do I not need to be concerned?
When I travel around the area where I live, I’m always looking at the habitats I pass by. I’ve come to see that mullein just loves to take off after someone has caused a big disturbance in the habitat, how old dormant seeds wake up when the soil is disrupted and exposed to new light. If the disturbance was that thing that our culture calls “development” — maybe new houses or some or another commercial venture where once a wood or meadow grew — I feel really good about harvesting the plants that grew up in that disturbance, but are probably going to be plowed up in favor of Kentucky bluegrass and ornamental shrubbery.
And so the other day I collected about 2 pounds of mullein root, and after I’d finished and was headed back to the car, I saw the big yellow Caterpillar (not the kind that turns into a butterfly) plow over a bunch of the area I just harvested from. I feel good that those plants will go on to help people, while the mullein growing in nearby meadows will continue to grow and set seed.
Some plants, of course, simply cannot be wildcrafted … at least not ethically. I know of one stand of goldenseal (Hydrastis canadensis) in my immediate vicinity. I think I may have seen the northernmost documented occurrence of wild black cohosh (Actaea racemosa) in Michigan. I’ve seen wild ginseng (Panax quinquefolius). I have never collected any of these. I have, though, planted them. Sometimes it’s by collecting and dispersing wild seed. On many occasions I’ve purchased plants and planted them, not just on my land, but in habitats in my region where they might thrive.
I commonly hear people discouraging the use of these herbs, citing (sometimes correctly and sometimes incorrectly) their “Threatened” or “Endangered” status, or citing that they’re on the United Plant Savers “At Risk” or “To Watch” lists. I think about it a little differently. If you’re able to obtain a fresh herb in bulk for medicine making you can’t ethically gather from a grower, DO IT. Doing so supports the farmers who are growing these plants, and that’s important: herb farming is not an easy business model, and the people who do it do so because they feel strongly about the plants they grow and our support of them helps to make that work happen. They won’t be able to grow these plants that need to be cultivated if people think they shouldn’t use them.
When I’ve purchased fresh roots like goldenseal, or black cohosh, or Solomon’s seal in the fall, I try to buy more than I need for whatever medicines I’m making. As I’m sorting through the roots and rhizomes to process, I’ll separate out the ones with vibrant looking shoots, and plant those. On my land, a good portion of the black cohosh and goldenseal that’s growing here came not from plants I bought as starts, but from the roots I bought to make medicine from. Over the years, these plants have established themselves and spread. Using these plants can help repopulate them.
If you look, you’ll find so many articles to be found that offer guidelines on “ethical” wildcrafting, which will tell you things like how many feet to be away from a roadside, that you can gather __% of a stand of plants sustainably, and all other manner of shoulds and musts. But really, “guidelines” are all these can ever be. Actual sustainable practice comes from experience, keen observation and listening. I can be closer to a roadside uphill than I can downhill. If collecting a certain percentage of plants is ”ethical,” what happens when 10 people collect that percentage of plants from the same stand?
Sometimes a plant that everyone says is rare and sensitive isn’t in your region. Sometimes a plant that everyone says is common and abundant isn’t in your region. How will you know? You have to spend as much energy learning your land as you do learning your herbalism.
There’s a trend I’ve seen in the past several years that I struggle with. It’s when people “in the know” misrepresent a plant’s ecological status to discourage its use. Probably the most common example I see of this every year is when people say that ghost pipe, Monotropa uniflora, is “threatened” or ”endangered,” though it isn’t, not in the legal sense of those words. “Endangered” means that a species is very likely to become extinct in the near future. “Threatened” means that a species is very likely to become endangered in the near future. Ghost pipe isn’t either of those things.
Several people I’ve talked to about this have said something to the effect of, “Well, maybe not, but if it deters people from picking it at all, then that’s probably good.” I don’t, though, feel good about that. Maybe it’s because of the way I parent, where I try not to mislead to guide behavior. I think that a peril in this type of deterrence is that if (or when) someone finds out that that they were misled, it undermines the authority of the person who misled them. If I were to tell someone, “Don’t pick ghost pipe! It’s endangered!” and the person finds out it isn’t, they may think I’m not a very reliable source of information. They may not believe me if I tell them not to pick a plant that actually is endangered. And they may think it’s okay to pick … you know, since it’s not endangered.
I would rather tell someone that while ghost pipe isn’t endangered, it is a very unique and sensitive plant. That it’s heterotrophic (non-photosynthetic), and relies on a very specific tree and fungal association (Russula and Lactarius species) to grow. That while the plant is widely distributed, it grows irregularly; and sometimes needs to skip years. That there is no reliable cultivation of the plant. That yes, I have collected it, but rarely use it, because there are so many other plants that probably have greater practical utility and that we can gather or grow much more sustainably. That just because you can make a case that you can collect something doesn’t mean you need to.
I would rather educate someone, share with them what I’ve come to understand and why, than mislead them. Probably this is because I’m a teacher, and I feel honor bound to teach what I know to be true. But also it’s because I have faith that we can learn to be good inhabitants of this Earth, and that we have to help each other to be that.
That, at least, is what the land I live on has taught me.
jim mcdonald is an herbalist in southeast Michigan where he teaches, sees clients, wildharvests, and concocts herbal formulas. His approach to herbalism is a blend of traditional folk and indigenous influences mixed up with a bit of 19th century eclectic and physiomedical vitalism, which he tries to blend with a bit of humor and discretionary irreverence. https://herbcraft.org/