I have been delving into why I am so obsessed with 'wild' plants in particular. Why do wild plants matter? Show me a well cultivated geranium and my eyes will glaze over. A sprig of yarrow defiantly growing in a perfectly manicured lawn however fills me with excitement.
What is a wild plant?
For me, a wild plant is one that has decided to root itself somewhere on its own terms.
Predominantly, I'm talking about native species, but I don't limit myself to this. Technically, a native species is one that came to the UK by the end of the last ice age, but I find this a bit arbitrary as plants, like people, move around and call new places their home.
Even plants brought over to the UK by humans - as many were by the Romans or Victorians - become naturalised in their new environment. Some more recent garden escapes also run off into the wild too. And I don't discriminate against them either. So, by my personal definition I'm including anything that has chosen to be where it is.
Why do we need the wild?
For a long time, I have been feeling that society has badly lost its way. The planet is burning - literally - and yet politicians are asking "can we afford net zero policies?". How can we not?
I have just finished reading Gabor Mate's phenomenal "The Myth of Normal", which looks into how the current functioning of our society normalises unnatural ways of living, and creates a culture where trauma and thus depression, addiction and chronic illnesses have also become the norm. The separation of the mind and body, of man from his environment, of the individual from the whole, have created a sense of isolation and inability to navigate towards a holistic way of living.
"Ancient cultures have long understood that we exist in relationship to all, are affected by all, and affect all" - Gabor Mate
I have written before about how much it fascinates me that until 12,000 years ago we were hunter gatherers (see my blog on "Searching for the Wild" ) until agriculture introduced the concept of and ownership, which was the origins of our capitalist system. So it won't be surprising that lately I have been reading more indigenous approaches to the land, which are renown for being based on a system of reciprocity and respect for the natural world.
One particular book that has caught my attention is "Braiding Sweetgrass", by Robin Wall Kimmerer, in which the author combines her professional knowledge of botany with her Native American heritage in what is a beautiful homage to the natural world and our relationship to it.
She says:
"Thanksgiving reminds us of how the world was meant to be in its original condition....Cultures of gratitude must also be cultures of reciprocity...Just about everything we use is the result of another's life, but that simple reality is rarely acknowledged in our society...Whether we are digging wild leeks or going to the mall, how do we consume in a way that does justice to the lives that we take?
"Cautionary stories of the consequences of taking too much are ubiquitous in Native cultures, but it's hard to recall a single one in English. Perhaps this is why we seem to be caught in a trap of overconsumption, which is a destructive to ourselves as to those we consume". - Robin Wall Kimmerer
This is something that Sharon Blackie has been trying to correct. In her book "If Women Rose Rooted", she explores how the development of Western culture has obscured these indigenous stories from the UK and Ireland. In these stories, women were given a prominent role as creators and guardians, promoting a respect for natural resources and the world around us:
"It's no accident that this systemic suppression of the feminine has been accompanied down the centuries not only by the devaluation of all that is wild and instinctual in our own natures, but by the purposeful destruction of our own ecosystems....This state of affairs has its roots in the deeply dualistic worldview which emerged out of Western philosophy over the last 2,000 years: we have come to believe that we are separate from nature, and more than that - that we are somehow above it....
"In the Western philosophical tradition since Plato and before, reason and intellect are the unique privilege domain of humans, superior to everything in nature - everything which is physical, instinctual and wild...In this tradition, women are linked to those inferior qualities of nature just as men are associated with the superior qualities of reason and intellect." - Sharon Blackie
In Genesis, she says, we have an origin story where the first woman is the cause of a fall from grace and so not to be trusted. Reading this has brought me back to a sentence in Genesis which has troubled me since I was a child. God says to Eve that as punishment for eating the forbidden (foraged!) fruit:
"I will increase your trouble in pregnancy and your pain in giving birth. In spite of this, you will still have desire for your husband, and yet you will be subject to him" - God, in Genesis, 3:16
So, the very act of giving birth is cursed. Rather than a cause of wonder and empowerment, our very entrance into the world is connected with shame and deception. This creates existential disconnect for both men, who are born of women, as well as women who are both birthed and give birth. No wonder we are culturally confused if the very moment we enter the world is seen in this light.
It also strikes me now as interesting that foraging was at the centre of all of this! The idea that earth's gifts are somehow not actually ours for the taking. God says to Adam:
"You listened to your wife and ate the fruit which I told you not to eat. Because of what you have done, the ground will be under a curse. You will have to work hard all your life to make it produce enough food for you. It will produce weeds and thorns, and you will have to eat wild plants. You will have to work hard and sweat to make soil produce anything, until you go back to the soil from which you were formed. You were made from soil and you will become soil again", - God in Genesis, 3:17
Instead of seeing the earth a place of abundance and wild plants as nutritious, the idea of toil, labour, and production emerge. The sentiment of coming from and returning to soil is actually quite a beautiful one, but somehow the parts in between speak of disconnect and struggle.
What can a reconnection with the Wild bring us?
In the face of all this, what does a relationship with wild plants stand to offer us, through a reconnection with our wild selves and our lost heritage? Here we can unlock a whole new way of relating to plants. As Gabor Mate says:
"Certainly, in their original contexts, plant medicines were and are consulted for far more than cures of pain relief: shamans consulted the spirits of these plants for community guidance, or divination of hunting and weather patterns, to commune with ancestors and to help make peace between warring factions, and, most elementally, simply to know and learn their ways.
"Each plant - including many flowers, bushes, and trees that wouldn't be considered psychedelic by our standards - is considered to have its own wisdom to impart, with its own curriculum that can take years of dedicated practice to absorb" - Gabor Mate
The School of Intuitive Herbalism is doing a lot of work bringing this journeying with modern plants into modern day herbalist practicing.
But all of us can sit with the plants, learn from them, and use them as a conduit to spiritual and emotional healing. In thinking about wild plants, there are 4 intrinsic qualities that stand out to me and that we can learn from:
TRUTH - I see wild plants as Earth's expression. They are well adapted to the conditions and places they grow and there's a degree of authenticity to that. They are not trying to fit in an environment that does not work for them. They have a sense of place, with deep roots. By contrast, a deep source of unhappiness for humans is a feeling that we are living less than authentic lives and that we cannot be our true selves. Finding our roots and our truths are critical steps in the path to healing.
AGENCY - One of the first things that attracted me to wild plants was that nobody put them there. As some raised in a very human centric vision of the world, I find it so refreshing that these beings choose to sprout as if out of nowhere. Fences and borders cannot control them. Dandelions can sprout up through the most miniscule crack in the concrete. There is a certain amount of power to that, liberation, and control. I feel we can learn from plants by taking our own first conscious steps informed by our own truth and authenticity.
HEALING - Wild plants heal the world through carbon capture and also by providing food and shelter for animals and insects. There is a strong sense of symbiosis which is incredibly healing. For us, we can learn the benefits of connection with others - both human and otherwise - through fostering such connections.
RESILIENCE - People often comment that the veg they try to grow gets eaten, the flowers they plant require lots of watering, and yet the weeds keep growing and looking healthy- and spreading! Isn't that amazing? Wild plants are incredibly resilient, and ideally we would want to be too.
I have done some brainstorming along these themes below:
Cycle of reconnection
Concluding thoughts
On a walk yesterday, I observed a poppy which had chosen to grow amid a field of wheat. The wheat itself spanned pretty much as far as the eye could see. Monoculture, dry, arid, lack of diversity. The (presumably) native hedgerow in the distance a stark green by comparison. But these two poppies, vibrant and defiant - ignoring the wire fence intended to protect the crop - seemed such a source of strength, an act of defiance, and a taste of what could be reclaimed if we lean into the wild.
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