China Bayles' Book of Days (53 page)

Hidden within the pages of the crumbling old diary are bits of humor, insights into fear of diseases of that time, and hope found in the plants that might deter or cure a particular illness. He records the use of ginger, pine tar, cayenne pepper, cinnamon, horseradish, rhubarb, myrrh, wild cherry bark, camphor, quinine, mullein, cabbage, lemons, mustard and many more. (From “Mysteries in the Old Diary,”
Herb Companion Magazine
)

It is Jim’s knowledge and appreciation of the past and his generosity in sharing it that makes him such a special person and Long Creek Herb Farm such a special place. Be sure and check the web site—
www.longcreekherbs.com
—for open hours. Advance reservations are required to visit the gardens and the shop. While you’re on the web site, take a few minutes to look at garden photos and read some of Jim’s columns, and bookmark the page so you can go back often.

SEPTEMBER 14

It is commonly called saponaria, of the great scouring qualitie that the leaves have: for they yield out of themselves a certain juyce when they are bruised, which scoureth almost as well as sope.

—JOHN GERARD, HERBAL, 1597

My Lady’s Washbowl

Before the invention of alkali-based soap, many peoples used natural soaps: the saps and juices of plants rich in saponins, which produce lather and have cleansing properties. On America’s western plains, the root of the yucca plant was regularly used as soap, while in Mexico and South America, it was the leathery brown leaves of the soapberry tree (
Sapindus saponaria
). In California, five species and five varieties of the “soap lily” (
Chlorogalum
) grow in the coastal shrub community. In the Andes, the dried inner bark of the soapbark tree (
Quillaja saponaria
), is used for soap and has also been employed in fire-extinguishing solutions. And in the Far East, the soapnut tree (
Sapindus mukorossi
) is used to clean silver and as a detergent for shawls and silks. The saponins in these plants are toxic, and indigenous peoples have often thrown them into the water to stun fish for easy catching.

BOUNCING BET But it’s the soapwort, or Bouncing Bet (Saponaria officinalis ) that you’re likely to have in your herb garden.

The plant is indigenous to Western Asia and Europe but was cultivated in colonial gardens of North America and is now widely naturalized. The lather is obtained from all parts of the plant, which is blooming a bright pink just now, in my Texas garden, very pretty among the darker green leaves.

Bouncing Bet is a country name for “washer-woman,” and the plant’s other folk names—my lady’s washbowl, latherwort, crow’s soap, and fuller’s herb—all reflect its long use as a cleansing agent. The herb was grown around woolen mills, where fullers used it to clean and thicken woolen fabric, and in Switzerland, where it was used to wash sheep before shearing. Soapwort was employed as a treatment for eczema, psoriasis, and acne, and used by Native Americans in a poultice for abdominal pain. Like other saponaceous plants, soapwort is mildly toxic, but that didn’t keep the Germans (and the Pennsylvania Dutch, as well) from adding it to beer to create a foamier head. Now, museum curators use it to clean delicate antique fabrics.

In the language of flowers, Bouncing Bet means (what else?) cleanliness.

The easiest way to discover soapwort’s soap is to pick a handful of leaves and flowers. Wet them and rub them between your hands. A fresh, grassy scent and cool green lather will arise. Try it on dirty hands and faces—it cleans.

—SUSAN TYLER HITCHCOCK, GATHER YE WILD THINGS

SEPTEMBER 15

It is, indeed, a jewel. Upon the approach of twilight each leaf droops as if wilted, and from the notches along its edge the crystal beads begin to grow, until its border is hung full with its gems. It is Aladdin’s lantern that you see among a bed of these succulent green plants, for the spectacle is like a dream land.

—WILLIAM HAMILTON GIBSON, OUR NATIVE ORCHIDS, 1905

A Jewel of a Weed

Gibson’s description may be . . . well, a little extravagant. Still, jewelweed
(Impatiens capensis
) has a beautiful orchidlike flower, and the plant’s widely known ability to take the itch out of poison ivy and insect bites does give it a special status.

People who live in jewelweed’s range (the Eastern seaboard, west to Oklahoma) know this herb by two other common and self-explanatory names: touch-me-not and snapweed. The ripe seed pods burst at a touch, snapping their seeds for distances of up to four feet—a habit that explains why this plant is so invasive. In the garden, one jewelweed will quickly lead to dozens, so unless you’re fond of pulling seedlings, you might want to pass on this one. Enjoy the plant in its woodland haunts, where it grows in moist, shady areas.

You can easily use jewelweed to solve your poison ivy problems. On the spot, just rub the affected area with the fresh leaves. Gather additional leaves—better yet, the just-flowering tops—and use them to brew a strong bath tea: four cups of boiling water poured over a cup of the fresh herb, steeped for 15 minutes. Strain and pour into your bath for a fragrant, cleansing soak. Keep the extra tea in the refrigerator for a month or more, or freeze the tea in ice cube trays for those days in early spring when poison ivy is at its most potent. You can also use it to make an ointment or a salve.

Find out more about jewelweed and other native herbs:

Hedgemaids and Fairy Candles: The Lives and Lore of North American Wildflowers,
by Jack Sanders

About the edges of the yellow corn,
And o’er the gardens grown somewhere outworn
The bees went hurrying to fill up their store;
The apple boughs bent over more and more . . .
—WILLIAM MORRIS

SEPTEMBER 16

Almost all connoisseurs
Savor anise liqueurs,
Perhaps amiss. It’s anise
And not licorice,
Giving licorice liqueurs their allures.
—JAMES DUKE, LIVING LIQUEURS

Anise

Licorice-flavored anise (
Pimpinella anisum
) is an herb that is undistinguished in the garden but calls attention to itself when it appears on the plate. In Roman times, aniseed was used as a spice, especially in the
mustacae,
the spiced cake served after banquets to ease indigestion; it may be a precursor of the modern wedding cake. It is mentioned in the Bible (Matthew 23:23) as a payment of taxes and land rents, although most scholars think this is a mistranslation, and that dill is meant. Aniseed was believed to ward off evil.

The aromatic seed was especially prized in northern Europe, where it had to be imported because the plant doesn’t readily set seed in northern climates. In the thirteenth century, the repair of London Bridge was funded by a tax on imported condiments, including aniseed. Edward IV’s royal linen was scented with “lytill bagges of fustian stuffed with anneys,” and there was a heavy import duty on the seed until the 1700s.

Even if your anise refuses to set seed, the foliage makes a deliciously licorice-flavored tea and vinegar, and can be added to fruit salads. Aniseed is a favorite flavoring for liqueurs; to make your own, steep six tablespoons of crushed aniseeds in a quart of brandy.

Interestingly, aniseed (once used as a mouse bait) is employed in the sport of “drag-hunting” in England. In the early 1900s, the drag was described as “a red herring in a hare-skin with a little aniseed.” Fox-hounds are familiar with anise, according to Elizabeth Hayes, in
Spices and Herbs
, for they are trained to follow a trail made by dragging a sack saturated with anise oil.

To grow in your garden, plant the seeds in early spring, in rich soil and full sun, well away from the local hounds.

Read more about the lore and uses of spices:

Spices and Herbs: Lore & Cookery
, by Elizabeth S. Hayes

The decayed Flower-stems of Hyssop, Savory, Lavenders and other aromatic Plants of that kind, should be cut down, and all the straggling and other young Shoots should be shortened. . . . But remember to do this in a moist Time, if possible.

—THE GARDENERS KALENDAR, 1777

SEPTEMBER 17

As a child, Lunaria was a favorite flower, for it afforded to us juvenile money. Indeed, it was generally known among us as Money-flower or Money-seed, or sometimes as Money-in-both-pockets. The seed valves formed our medium of exchange and trade, passing as silver dollars.

—ALICE MORSE EARLE, OLD TIME GARDENS

Honesty, Honestly

My mother grew honesty in her garden. It would have bloomed about now, its translucent, silvery seed disks shimmering like full moons. It is an old-fashioned plant that was once common to English cottage gardens—there is one growing in the garden of Beatrix Potter’s Hill Top Farm. In a letter to a friend, she tells how she got the plant: “Mrs. Satterthwaite says stolen plants always grow, I stole some ‘honesty’ yesterday, it was put to be burnt in a heap of garden refuse!” Honesty blooms in early summer, with lavender, pink, or white flowers. The translucent seed pods that follow are perfect in dried bouquets.

This is another of those plants-with-a-dozen-names. Its Latin name,
Lunaria
, is derived from “moon,” and one of its names—moonwort—refers to its shimmering moonlike seed disks. But because the seeds resemble coins, it is also called money flower, money plant, or penny flower. In
Old Time Gardens,
Alice Morse Earle tells a poignant story about an old man named Elmer, who was (in the language of the times) addle-pated. He slept in barns, proffered the seeds of the money plant in return for the loaves of bread and jugs of milk he “bought” in the village, and was fond of saying that he had hundreds of silver dollars put away for the winter. The villagers understood what he meant by this and humored him, but one day some tramps overheard him talking about his wealth and killed him for it. “Scattered around him,” Earle writes sadly, “were hundreds of the seeds of his autumnal store of the money plant; these were all the silver dollars his assailants found.”

No one—not even the Oxford English Dictionary, that font of linguistic wisdom—seems to know where the name “honesty” came from. All we have is John Gerard’s report, in his
Herbal
of 1597: “We cal this herb in English Pennie Flour . . . and among our women it is called Honestie.” I wonder whether poor old Elmer was the only man ever killed for his honesty.

Read more of Alice Earle’s fascinating recollections:

Old Time Gardens,
by Alice Morse Earle

“Mrs. Satterthwaite says stolen plants always grow, I stole some ‘honesty’ yesterday . . . I have had something out of nearly every garden in the village.”

—BEATRIX POTTER, IN A LETTER TO HER FRIEND
MILLIE WARNE, OCTOBER 12, 1906

SEPTEMBER 18

Mints are like stray cats; you take them in, give them some food, and they are yours forever.

—ART TUCKER

The Ubiquitous Mint

Mint is so universally valued that it is grown by cooks and herbalists everywhere. If you don’t already have mint in your herb garden (for heaven’s sake, why not?), this is a good time to remedy that deficiency. Transplanted now, mint will have time to settle in before the winter.

Of course, you’ll want to take precautions. Mint is like the proverbial camel: Once it has its nose under the tent, the rest arrives shortly. Control its spread with metal or wooden barriers, and be ruthless about removing stolons. If you don’t want the extra work, grow it in a hanging basket or large, shallow pot.

Peppermint (
Mentha piperita
) is the medicinal mint. Its menthol soothes digestive troubles, freshens the breath, relieves chest congestion, and has a calming effect. A steaming cup of peppermint tea not only tastes good but also works wonders when you’re coming down with a cold. Spearmint (
Mentha spicata
)—the “Wrigley’s Spearmint” herb—is more often used as a culinary herb. It’s a standby for mint jelly, mint sauce, mint julep, and mint punch. Both plants can be dried, but their flavor is much more pronounced when they’re fresh. Some other mints you will enjoy: apple mint, lavender mint, chocolate mint, pineapple mint, banana mint, lemon bergamot mint, and wooly apple mint. These flavored mints should be renewed every year, since they are easily cross-pollinated and the seedlings do not come true.