Teeter Creek Herbs

Teeter Creek Herbs Quality Herbal Extracts from the Ozarks

Teeter Creek Herbs is a small, land-based family operation, and that is what makes our products stand out in the ever-growing herbal market: the attention to the details of every phase from the growing herb to the final product.

Sweet Everlasting (Gnaphalium obtusifolium) also known as Cudw**d, and Old-field Balsam. One of the last of the floweri...
10/04/2020

Sweet Everlasting (Gnaphalium obtusifolium) also known as Cudw**d, and Old-field Balsam. One of the last of the flowering plants of the autumn, it is easily overlooked and not widely discussed in modern herbalism. It was nevertheless widely appreciated by the Native Americans and early pioneers. It is easily identified by rubbing the flowers, which give off a sweet scent which, to me at least, smells like maple syrup. Found in old fields, roadsides, edges of woods.
It's gentle analgesic (pain-relieving) properties, were known over a wide area. A strong infusion was applied for muscle pain and other painful areas. Some tribes made scratches for muscle pain to which the medicine was applied. A bath and tea was given to children for pain and fever. A wash was applied to the face for nervousness and insomnia. Use of the tea internally would always benefit, being calming as well.
It is an old stand-by made into a syrup for cough and lung pain. It was smoked, like Mullein, to relieve spasmodic asthma.
It is interesting to note its use as an inhalant in the sweat lodge for general healing; while the smudge from the dried plant was supposed to be specifically used for driving away ghosts and bad spirits and for those bothered by a ghost, while also used to bring back someone "whose mind/spirit has wandered off", and for reviving one who is unconscious. In other words, a lot of psycho/spiritual implications. Having taken part in quite a few Native healing ceremonies, I no longer confine these things to a strictly Western approach....

The last of the late bloomers bring their vibrant colors for one last celebration of summer. The Goldenrods (Solidago ...
09/20/2020

The last of the late bloomers bring their vibrant colors for one last celebration of summer. The Goldenrods (Solidago species) can often be seen in dense stands in fields and along roadsides. It makes a fascinating study as Goldenrod attracts what must be 50 different bugs, bees and beetles having a last glorious feast on its abundant pollen. Many people believe that Goldenrod is a major source of fall allergies, but its not a wind-blown pollen; the culprit is most likely the ragw**d that is likely growing nearby.
The flower tops and leaves are used in a tea or tincture; I like to use more tops. The plant has a complex chemistry, with oils and flavonoids. As there are species of Goldenrod that grow all over Europe, its uses were a wedding of European folk and apothecary and Native herbology. It's uses are centered around being an all around kidney restorative, for allergy symptoms (yes indeed!), and for skin rashes, wounds, and internally for various skin conditions.
An overall tonic and restorative for weak kidneys, and an aid in water retention with swollen ankles, puffy eyes and backache, for scanty urination, urinary tract pain, and as an adjunct for urinary infections. A mucous-membrane tonic, it especially benefits the sinus passages in watery nasal discharge and allergy symptoms (akin to the use of Elder Flower and Plantain; also mucous membrane tonics). It is used on rashes, wounds, ulcers and internally for chronic skin conditions. A good gum health rinse. One of the more overlooked herbal treasures.

" Flowers were made to be seen, not overlooked. Their bright colors imply eyes and spectators." Henry David Thoreau, Journals

Boneset (Eupatorium perfoliatum) is a late-summer bloomer. It grows on ground that is marshy-wet at least part of the ye...
08/30/2020

Boneset (Eupatorium perfoliatum) is a late-summer bloomer. It grows on ground that is marshy-wet at least part of the year. Another of the flower havens for butterflies.
One of its identifying features are the double-lanced leaves that are "perforated" by the stem.
Once found drying in the rafters in most every cabin of the Ozark pioneers; another gift from the Native people's. It had quite a reputation as an aid in the epidemic fevers that were so prevalent then. The origin of the name is in some dispute; some maintaining that it refers to the Natives use as a poultice for bones; others that it refers to what was called "break bone fever"; fever accompanied by muscle ache that hurts to the bone! It's considered one of the prime "sweating out" herbs.
Other indications based on folk uses were developed by the Eclectic and other botanic doctors of the 19th century that emphasized its good effects during a fever and after for cough, and where the lungs and chest are sore. It also tones up the digestion and aids overall recovery. An herb with a lot of potential, especially these days....

"I sympathize with w**ds perhaps more than with the crop they choke; they express so much vigor. They are the truer crop which the earth more willingly bears."
Henry David Thoreau, Journals (who else in the 1850's was praising w**ds!)

A little something different. A couple of poems, a bit of nostalgia, a bit of Zen, and a good recipe from Ted Kooser, p...
08/16/2020

A little something different. A couple of poems, a bit of nostalgia, a bit of Zen, and a good recipe from Ted Kooser, poet laureate from Nebraska:

HOW TO MAKE RHUBARB WINE

Go to the patch some afternoon
in early summer, fuzzy with beer
and sunlight, and pick a sack
of rhubarb (red or green will do)
and God knows watch out for rattlesnakes
or better, listen, they make a sound
like an old lawn mower rolled downhill.
Wear a hat. A straw hats best
for the heat, but let's the gnats in.
Bunch up the stalks and chop the leaves off
With a buck knife and be careful.
You need ten pounds, a grocery bag
packed full will do it. Then go home
and sit barefoot in the shade
behind the house with a can of beer.
Spread out the rhubarb in the grass
And wash it with cold water
from the garden hose, washing
your feet as well. Then take a nap.
That evening, dice the rhubarb up
And put it in a crock. Then pour
eight quarts of boiling water in,
cover it with a checkered cloth
to keep the fruit flies out
and let it stand for five days or so.
Take time each day to think of it.

Ferment ten days, under the cloth,
sniffing of it from time to time,
then siphon it off, swallowing some,
and bottle it. Sit back and watch
the liquid clear to honey yellow,
bottled and ready for the years,
and smile. You've done it awfully well.

DISHWATER

Slap of the screen door, flat knock
of my grandmother's boxy black shoes
on the wooden stoop, the hush and sweep
of her knob-kneed, cotton-aproned stride
out to the edge and then, toed in
with a furious twist and heave,
a bridge that leaps from her hot red hands
and hangs there shining for fifty years
over the mystified chickens,
over the swaying nettles, the ragw**d,
the clay slope down to the creek,
over the redwing blackbirds in the tops
of the willows, a glorious rainbow
with an empty dishpan swinging at one end.

Another of the beautiful wildflowers that the butterflies are flocking to now is the prolific Horsemint, also known as B...
08/03/2020

Another of the beautiful wildflowers that the butterflies are flocking to now is the prolific Horsemint, also known as Bee Balm and Wild Bergamot (Monarda spp.), found in old fields, gladey areas and along roadsides. The leaves and flowers make a pungent, minty tea that people always valued as a stimulating beverage, for which it is infused (not boiled).
Ozarkers and Native Americans both valued it highly. Species are found from the eastern US, to the Plains and Southwest. It was valued for its stimulating properties from everything to "sweating out" colds and fevers to fainting spells, a bath for weak children, and by Plains tribes for making horses lively. I have seen the leaves chewed at Sun Dances and Pow Wows to strengthen the singers and dancers. For coughs, lung congestion and swollen glands. The tea used on the sweat lodge rocks for incense and for physical healing.
Poultices of the flowers and leaves were applied for headache (on the head or leaves in the nose), for nosebleed and other bleeding. Poultice for blisters and skin blemishes.
Many peoples liked to hang it around their homes and tipis for the fragrance and the long-lasting flowers. Widely popular as a perfume applied to clothes and wove into mats and placed in pillows. Perfumes were often added to the oil of the castor glands of animals for a long-lasting perfume for the body, hair and clothes.
Take a little home and dry it for a great strengthening winter tea. The flowers will brighten up a winter day.

Pleurisy Root, also known as Butterfly W**d has been blooming for a few weeks now. There is nothing quite like the oran...
07/21/2020

Pleurisy Root, also known as Butterfly W**d has been blooming for a few weeks now. There is nothing quite like the orange of the flowers. It is in the Milkw**d family, and like Milkw**d, is a favorite of many varieties of butterflies. Easily grown from any part of the root. Missouri Wildflower Nursery in Jeff. City has starts for the Butterfly W**d and many other native flowers and plants.
The root was highly valued by the Native tribes and by the pioneers for acute and irritative lung conditions. Resolves fever and was used especially for fever, pain, fluid in the lungs and cough, as in the pleurisy it was named for. Also for lingering irritating coughs. Also for eruptive fevers like measles.
Among other Native uses, the Omaha dug the root with much ceremony, and it had important ritual uses. No doubt their cousins, the Osage did as well. Also mentioned is the fact that it was eaten raw for its medicine uses. I can testify that sometimes eating the raw root can put you right in touch with the energy of the plant in a big way. Long ago my first real encounter with Echinacea was digging the raw root and chewing it, instantly resolving a case of sore throat I had been carrying around for days.

. Black Cohosh is blooming now with its plume of white flowers like a sparkler. Found in the rich or rocky woods...
06/27/2020

.
Black Cohosh is blooming now with its plume of white flowers like a sparkler. Found in the rich or rocky woods and at the base of bluffs. Like it's cousin, Blue Cohosh, there is the pattern of leaflets of three from a three-pronged stem.
It is one the roots handed to the forebears of Ozark granny women by the midwives of such eastern tribes as the Cherokee. Best known as a female hormonal balancer, promoting estrogen. Used for hot flashes, hard to start periods, cramps with backache and/or leg cramps. Hormonal depression,gloom, weepiness. And indeed used as a labor promoter.
The Eclectic doctors, in their provings, brought out its anti-inflammatory and anti-spasmodic effects esp. involving muscles, as in fibromyalgia, rheumatism, tendonitis, neck pain, muscle spasm,spasmodic cough.

"Not till June can the grass be said to be waving in the fields. When the frogs dream and the grass waves, and the buttercups toss their heads, and the heat disposes one to bathe in the ponds and streams, then is summer begun."
Henry David Thoreau. Journals

"Common Medicinal Herbs of the Ozarks": By Bob Liebert. A valuable, information-packed booklet on the herbs of the Ozarks and surrounding regions: their uses by modern herbalists, as well as traditional uses by Native Peoples and the pioneers of the Ozarks. Info on gathering and storing of herbs. Nice pen and ink illustrations by Kevin Mc Williams, and detailed sketches of many of the plants.
To order: www.teetercreekherbs.com

Spiderwort (Tradescantia spp.) a slender, graceful plant with beautiful violet-blue flowers, is blooming along the edges...
05/30/2020

Spiderwort (Tradescantia spp.) a slender, graceful plant with beautiful violet-blue flowers, is blooming along the edges of woods, pastures and roadsides. They are pretty shy: in their glory in the morning sun; by late afternoon they close up for the night.
I would put them in the category of mainly beautiful to behold, but do have some uses along the lines of "you might try it a time or two". The leaves can be chopped and added to a salad. When the leaves are pulled off, the remaining stalk is a rather substantial edible: crunchy, with a celery-like taste, and a sticky coating. Of course any harvesting should be lightly done in a larger colony. There are species with lighter colored petals, to pinkish, that are rarer in the Ozarks.
The Native Americans used it for stomachaches and soothing urinary tract inflammation. It was also used for skin inflammations and for burns, which I haven't tried yet, but imagine the sticky juice to be akin to using aloe Vera.
A very interesting use is as one of the few biological indicators of harmful radiation and mutagens. When exposed to these substances over a couple of weeks, the flowers will turn pale to pinkish. Spiderworts have been planted in the vicinity of nuclear plants and other potentially toxic sites.
After mentioning it's edible uses, I have to mention one of the times I was visiting one of the Ozark old-timers who still knew some of the old-time Ozark herb lore. Alas, they are almost all gone now. Arlene Brummett was taught by her grandmother, who was an old time Granny Woman (midwife and herb doctor) who had delivered hundreds of babies and caring for the sick in her time, traveling by wagon, fording streams in all kinds of weather to aid her neighbors. Arlene and I were walking her fence row when we came upon a spiderwort. All she told me was that they had an interesting name for it - "cow slobbers". It was only some years later when I stripped the leaves and found the sticky, edible stalk that I recalled Arlene and her great local names, so observant of the plants themselves: in this case having to peel the plant for its uses to get at the name. Not a name to inspire a gourmet though...

FOREST BATHINGIn both Taoism and Zen Buddhism, immersion in nature was considered a very important part of the practice....
05/17/2020

FOREST BATHING
In both Taoism and Zen Buddhism, immersion in nature was considered a very important part of the practice. In China, there were various waves of "back to the land movements". Poets, monks, scholars, painters and even the emperor sought out the gardens and parks and especially the wilds for inspiration and meditation.
In the 1980's in Japan, the government, along with researchers, began to study the health benefits of spending time in forest preserves on their people, who were suffering the mental and physical stresses of living and working in ever-more crowded conditions.
One of these researchers was Dr. Qing Lee, who over the years has monitored thousands of people through a series of health panels measuring heart rate, stress hormone levels, immune factors, mental factors, cholesterol, blood pressure and more, before and even a month after they would spend at least 4 hours in a forest preserve. The beneficial results were impressive, and have since been duplicated by many studies done throughout the world.
What emerged was a therapeutic system they called Shinrin Yoku, or Forest Bathing; a term that is so evocative with its sense of immersing oneself, and using the senses to engage and let the experience of the forest wash over you.
Today there are books and retreats and practitioners all about Forest Bathing. They give some of the research, and suggestions for various ideas to enhance the experience and benefits: from breathing exercises, to meditations, to the arts like poetry and drawing in the forest. But most valuable of all, in my experience is the non-ambitious walking or sitting in the forest and passively engaging all the senses....Which turns out to be not passive at all, but a very dynamic two-way communication with the forest and ultimately the Universal Mind.
One surprising (but intuitively sensible) result of Dr. Qing Li's research was the beneficial effects on the immune system. He attributed it to stress relief as well as to phytoncides; anti-bacterial, anti-fungal, and ant-viral plant chemicals that are being continually emitted by plants that protect them from micro-organisms and insects. Of course, plant chemistry is a lot of what medical botany is all about. Perhaps there are chemicals that are emitted from the "joy" of a healthy plant being alive! Oak trees, pine trees, many others emit phytoncides. BREATHE IN THE FOREST! There are also the greens and yellows and other hues of the healing color spectrum.
And of course there is FEELING - Biophilia, "love of nature" is hard-wired into our evolution.

"In the woods I feel that nothing can befall me... which nature cannot repair" - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The walking of which I speak has nothing in it akin to taking exercise.... I think I cannot preserve my health and spirits unless I spend 4 hours(!) a day at least sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields free from all worldly engagements"
Henry David Thoreau, “

Sweet Cicely (Osmorhiza claytonii) Wild Anise Root. Western varieties known as Sweet Root. Grows in the richer woods an...
05/07/2020

Sweet Cicely (Osmorhiza claytonii) Wild Anise Root. Western varieties known as Sweet Root. Grows in the richer woods and thickets. All parts of the plant give off an anise-like scent and taste. My main use of it, like Spicebush, is as woods-walk aromatherapy. They both have potency though.
Native American tribes valued the whole plant. Used for colds, chest congestion and cough, and as a stimulant for a weak stomach. Such uses were taken up by Ozark pioneers. A panacea for bringing a person back after a prolonged illness; as such it was granted magical properties in healing and other ceremonies. Chewed for sore throat. A wash for sore eyes. Used as a fever remedy. Raw root for toothache. Snakebite remedy. An antiseptic wash. Put with clothing as a deodorant. A love medicine.
Some intriguing uses: Carried or tea is bathed with before going out hunting to attract animals. Applied to bait to attract fish. The Iroquois, like the Hopi, soaked their seed corn in it to make it grow good. It is interesting to speculate if part of its efficacy may be in anti-bacterial and anti-fungal properties of the oils in protecting the seed.

"Certain localities only a few rods square in the fields, the woods, sometimes the other side of a wall, attract me as i...
05/07/2020

"Certain localities only a few rods square in the fields, the woods, sometimes the other side of a wall, attract me as if they had been the scene of pleasure in another existence." Henry David Thoreau - Journals
There's the wonder and tactile pleasure of the childhood woods. For a while in childhood it was Middle Earth that was the other existence. Now as I get older that existence, like the rocks that underlay it all, seems to flow back in the millions of years...

Mullein likes disturbed ground, like our raised beds. Their seeds are remarkable in how long they can lay in the soil, ...
04/26/2020

Mullein likes disturbed ground, like our raised beds. Their seeds are remarkable in how long they can lay in the soil, waiting for something to disturb it. In their 2nd year they send up their torchlike flowering stalk.
Brought from Old Europe. With its commanding stalk, and flannel-like leaves it had a wonderful slough of names. Shepherd's Rod, Moses' Rod, Aaron's Rod. Hare's. Beard. The blankets: Moses', Old Man's, Our Lady's, and Poor Man's Blanket. And of course the "Poor" man and the "Poor" woman valued it enough to call it Lungwort (w**d). Associated with softness and soothing, it was widely known as a restorative for the lungs, contains silica, as does the bronchioles. Strain if making a tea. An old-time poultice for sprains, bruises, pain.
Mullein from French Mullieux (soft, spongy). Which brings us to its new-found (but long-known) fame as emergency wilderness toilet paper. I'll resist letting you know when Wal Mart runs out of TP for a product comparison... Bless us one and all... Bob

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