Description
12 artists and a poet join herbalist Jayne Palmer in celebrating a year of plants and trees that are extremely useful in herbal medicine.
Herbalist Jayne Palmer and poet Nadia Kingsley have known each other for over fifteen years – and for the past two years Nadia has been writing a poem each month for Jayne’s monthly herbal blog on her roots to health website.
In this charming pamphlet – along with the help of twelve artist friends they have brought together the first twelve herbs: Mahonia, Coltsfoot, Willow, Sweet violet, Hawthorn, Meadowsweet, Lemon balm, Dog rose, Fennel, Elderberry, Horse Chestnut, and Scots Pine.
Jayne Palmer is a medical herbalist with a degree from the College of Phytotherapy in Hailsham, Surrey, and is a member of The National Institute of Medical Herbalists.
In 2016, with the support of local philanthropist John Lister she has opened a shop and treatment room on the High Street of Honiton, in Devon.
In this book we celebrate twelve wonderful medicinal plants – through Jayne’s writing – and with poems and pictures by friends.
Introduction and Prose by Jayne Palmer
Poems by Nadia Kingsley
Images by Catherine Pascall Moore, Jo Dards, Linda Nevill, Amanda Lebus, Tim Keates, Sara Berry, Giancarlo Facchinetti, Gordon Yapp, Kay Palmer, Annette Drake, Paul Kielty, Adriana Wall.
Cover by Sara Berry
Here is Nadia Kingsley’s January’s poem about the Mahonia, as a little taster:
On a wintry woodland walk
“That’s not a holly bush” she informs
“Look there – at its spears of yellow flowers.
And if you come back in a month or more – you’ll see
that its berries are blue, not red. “Did you know,” she adds,
“that the berries are actually edible? You can make wine, or brandy”.
“Is that why it’s called the Oregon Grape?” I ask. She’s impressed.
I’ve been googling the plant, behind her back,
as we walk one-by-one down the narrow wooded path,
and I now read out: “It’s part of the Barberry family.
Did you know”, I add, “that the leaves’ undersides are tartan?”
“That’s Burberry” she says, as she gives me such an icy look
it’d wither even the Mahonia aquifolium – which is, by the way, evergreen.
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