Invasive Plant Medicine: The Ecological Benefits and Healing Abilities of Invasives

by Timothy Lee Scott, Stephen Harrod Buhner (Foreword by)

Overview

The first book to demonstrate how plants originally considered harmful to the environment actually restore Earth’s ecosystems and possess powerful healing properties

• Explains how invasive plants enhance biodiversity, purify ecosystems, and revitalize the land

• Provides a detailed look at the healing properties of 25 of the most common invasive plants

Most of the invasive plant species under attack for disruption of local ecosystems in the United States are from Asia, where they play an important role in traditional healing. In opposition to the loud chorus of those clamoring for the eradication of all these plants that, to the casual observer, appear to be a threat to native flora, Timothy Scott shows how these opportunistic plants are restoring health to Earth’s ecosystems. Far less a threat to the environment than the cocktails of toxic pesticides used to control them, these invasive plants perform an essential ecological function that serves to heal both the land on which they grow and the human beings who live upon it. These plants remove toxic residues in the soil, providing detoxification properties that can help heal individuals.

Invasive Plant Medicine demonstrates how these “invasives” restore natural balance and biodiversity to the environment and examines the powerful healing properties offered by 25 of the most common invasive plants growing in North America and Europe. Each plant examined includes a detailed description of its physiological actions and uses in traditional healing practices; tips on harvesting, preparation, and dosage; contraindications; and any possible side effects. This is the first book to explore invasive plants not only for their profound medical benefits but also with a deep ecological perspective that reveals how plant intelligence allows them to flourish wherever they grow.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781594773051
Publisher:	Inner Traditions/Bear & Company
Publication date:	08/13/2010
Edition description:	Original
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	1,081,880
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Timothy Lee Scott is an acupuncturist and herbalist with a master’s degree in traditional Chinese medicine. He runs a private practice in Vermont and gives workshops on Chinese herbalism, native medicinal plant cultivation, and the benefits of invasive plants.

Stephen Harrod Buhner (1952–2022) was an Earth poet and the award-winning author of many books on nature, indigenous cultures, the environment, and herbal medicine. He comes from a long line of healers including Leroy Burney, Surgeon General of the United States under Eisenhower and Kennedy, and Elizabeth Lusterheide, a midwife and herbalist who worked in rural Indiana in the early nineteenth century. The greatest influence on his work, however, was his great-grandfather C.G. Harrod who primarily used botanical medicines, also in rural Indiana, when he began his work as a physician in 1911.

Stephen's work has appeared or been profiled in publications throughout North America and Europe including Common Boundary, Apotheosis, Shaman's Drum, The New York Times, CNN, and Good Morning America. www.gaianstudies.org

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1

THE WEED

There was a time, long forgotten, around the advent of agricultural civilizations some ten thousand years ago that humans began to look at plants differently. Before this, all was a wild garden with diverse flora and fauna all having a place. But with the invention of the crop, people began to discriminate between the different plants. A plant that did not serve human needs or interfered with the crops was deemed a “weed.” This marked a shift in the paradigm of paradise, and humans began severing themselves from Nature in a paramount way. The desire and attempt to keep the wild at bay have been passed down to further generations and predominate people’s thinking to this day.

The nature of a weed is opportunistic, and we as humans have created enormous holes of opportunity for these plants to fill. They have adapted to be at humans’ side, waiting for those favorable times to cover the exposed soils humans are continually creating. Weeds have evolved to withstand the punishments that humans unleash upon them, with ever-changing genetics of form, function, and transmutation.

Weeds are especially adapted to adapt.

For tens of thousands of years, people have transported and intentionally introduced plants all over the world for food, fiber, medicine, ornament, and scientific curiosity, and as this practice has continued up until present day, we humans have been complacent in, and have encouraged, the spread of plants. Nowadays, the common plants we see throughout our meadows, countryside, and city streets—like plantain, mullein, St. John’s wort, burdock, chicory, coltsfoot, fennel, and daylily—are but “alien” species and did not grow here until the first Europeans arrived. Both the Native American and Chinese names for common plantain translate as “white man’s footsteps,” referring to the fact that this plant followed along the colonizing trail of Europeans. One plantain species has sword-shaped leaves (lanceolata) with wound-healing abilities. Instead of complaining about this plant, the indigenous herbalists made good use of it as medicine—for it was in need. I do not know if the first arrivals would have been considered invasive some five hundred years ago, but they sure were foreign, just like the knotweeds and loosestrifes of today. Over time though, we have seen these plants find an ecological niche in dynamic equilibrium among the different species within the landscape.

With this, all plants serve ecological functions within their environment. Mullein, for example, will blanket the land where fire has brought down forests. It appears as though the plant is “invading” the land, but after a year or two, new plant species emerge and diversity expands. Mullein acts as an Earth “balm” that eases and blankets with its leaves the internal burns and helps regenerate new growth—which it also happens to do for the human lungs.

Forests are the lungs of the Earth, you know.

While all colonizing plants offer medicine and some provide food for our planet’s inhabitants, some also protect the land after improper clearing and use, some renew degraded soils, some cleanse the waters, and some breakdown and clean up toxins and pollutants in the soil.

The plants are here for a reason.

They are here to serve essential ecological functions.

They are here for us to use as medicine.

But there are the rampant, freaky ones from faraway lands, those with the loud, annoying voices screaming throughout the world.

They stand up and say “Here I Am” with an arrogant smirk and go about spreading The Good Word cheerfully. People can put up with it for only so long. If the voices do not dampen their volume, human condition resorts to force to make them stop.

But what if these voices were actually saying something important?

Do we stop to listen? Do we know why this strange one has come bearing exotic fruits?

So many times, the messenger has been killed.

In our modern world, it’s as if all of us (humans, plants, animals, microbes, and so forth) are meandering around looking for a place to settle down. We all have taken root where conditions are right and have become a new expression, like never before. This time on the good planet Earth is a birth of something new, a global mosaic of intermingling forms and colors, changing landscapes, and a group of plants erasing the mark of the Industrial Age.

Whether we like it or not.

By the dawn of the twentieth century, laws began to be passed by U.S. Congress to control plants that impeded the progress of the Great Agricultural Machine. The regulations started with the Lacey Act of 1900, followed by the Plant Pest Act, Plant Quarantine Act, and the Federal Noxious Weed Act of 1974, in which officials targeted plants that “can directly or indirectly injure crops, other useful plants, livestock, poultry, or other interests of agriculture, including irrigation, navigation, fish and wildlife resources, or the public health.” Farmers were the primary promoters of these first bills to protect crops and livestock from the wilds of Nature. It was not until the Executive Order 13112 signed in 1999 by President Clinton that billion-dollar funds were allocated to promote widespread appeal and greater influence to “rapidly respond” against “an alien species whose introduction does or is likely to cause economic or environmental harm or harm to human health.” This has led to a halt on importing virtually any exotic plant that hasn’t been cleared as a threat, even though scientists find it impossible to determine who the threats might be in the first place. No one knows the exact number of exotic species of plants in the United States, with a wide range from 30,000 to 50,000, with maybe 5,000 to 7,000 becoming naturalized. With a total of 150,000 species living among one another in this country, less than one-half percent of them fit into this category we put so much energy and money into combating.

Table of Contents

Foreword by Stephen Harrod Buhner

Acknowledgments

Introducing the Weed


PART 1
Waging War on Plants

1 The Politics of Prolific Plants
2 The Science of Invasions
3 Naturally Native: Plants on the Move
4 The Nature of Harm, the Harm to Nature
5 Invasive Herbicidal Impacts
6 The Economics of Weeds

PART 2
The Intelligence of Plants

7 The Deep Ecology of Invasives
8 The Chemistry of Plant Medicine
9 Using Invasive Plants to Treat Invasive Diseases

PART 3
Guide to Invasive Plants: Medicine and Ecological Roles

Artemisia (Artemisia absinthium var. annua)
Barberry (Berberis vulgaris var. thunbergii)
Bindweed (Convolvulus arvensis)
Blackberry (Rubus spp.)
Dandelion (Taraxacum officinale)
English Ivy (Hedera helix)
Garlic Mustard (Alliaria petiolata)
Japanese Honeysuckle (Lonicera japonica)
Japanese Knotweed (Polygonum cuspidatum)
Knapweed or Star Thistle (Centaurea spp.)
Kudzu (Pueraria montana var. lobata)
Oriental Bittersweet (Celastrus orbiculatus)
Plantain (Plantago spp.)
Purple Loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria)
Reed (Phragmites australis)
Russian/Autumn Olive (Elaeagnus spp.)
Scotch Broom (Cytisus scoparius)
Siberian Elm (Ulmus pumila)
Tamarisk (Tamarix spp.)
Thistle (Cirsium spp.)
Tree-of-Heaven (Ailanthus altissima)
White Mulberry (Morus alba)
Wild Mustard (Brassica rapa var. nigra)
Wild Rose (Rosa spp.)

Epilogue

Notes

Bibliography

Index

What People are Saying About This

Toby Hemenway

“Timothy Lee Scott shows how wrongheaded it is to single out other species as harmful. In nearly every case, the blame for damage done by so-called invasive species lies with us, when we have created an imbalance that opens opportunities for new species to move in. Tim goes beyond simply removing blame from our fellow species. He shows how erstwhile invaders can teach us how to heal damaged ecosystems and ourselves.”

Irene Watson

"Invasive Plant Medicine is not only a keeper, but a healer.

Rosemary Gladstar

“I love this book. Brilliant and unique, Tim Scott’s new book is about to rock the world of plant enthusiasts. Written for the medical professional, lay person, gardener, botanist, and biologist, it’s for everyone who loves and worships at the roots of the green world. Invasive Plant Medicine provides a refreshing new theology of ‘invasives,’ or ‘messenger’ plants as they are so aptly termed by the author. Tim Scott goes deep beneath the surface, where thought, practicality, and poetry combine to create a dynamic new exploration of common plant medicine. Poetic, wise, visionary, and practical, this is my new favorite book about plants.”

Stephen Harrod Buhner

“So, be warned, this is a dangerous book. Tim Scott will change how you see ‘invasives,’ will make you question what you have been taught about them, force you to reexamine what you have read in newspapers, and demand you look more closely at what ‘experts’ have said.”

Editorial Reviews

Timothy Lee Scott shows how wrongheaded it is to single out other species as harmful. In nearly every case, the blame for damage done by so-called invasive species lies with us, when we have created an imbalance that opens opportunities for new species to move in. Tim goes beyond simply removing blame from our fellow species. He shows how erstwhile invaders can teach us how to heal damaged ecosystems and ourselves.

author of Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Home Toby Hemenway

This is an important, insightful book that should be read by all involved in herbal medicine or plant conservation, and more importantly, for all of us who should be questioning authority. In these times of rapid change it is refreshing to find such competent questioning of ‘established truths.’ Thanks, Tim!

David Hoffman

So, be warned, this is a dangerous book. Tim Scott will change how you see ‘invasives,’ will make you question what you have been taught about them, force you to reexamine what you have read in newspapers, and demand you look more closely at what ‘experts’ have said.

author of The Secret Teachings of Plants Stephen Harrod Buhner

"Invasive Plant Medicine is not only a keeper, but a healer."

Irene Watson

I love this book. Brilliant and unique, Tim Scott’s new book is about to rock the world of plant enthusiasts. Written for the medical professional, lay person, gardener, botanist, and biologist, it’s for everyone who loves and worships at the roots of the green world. Invasive Plant Medicine provides a refreshing new theology of ‘invasives,’ or ‘messenger’ plants as they are so aptly termed by the author. Tim Scott goes deep beneath the surface, where thought, practicality, and poetry combine to create a dynamic new exploration of common plant medicine. Poetic, wise, visionary, and practical, this is my new favorite book about plants.

herbalist and founder of United Plant Savers Rosemary Gladstar

Timothy Lee Scott shows how wrongheaded it is to single out other species as harmful. In nearly every case, the blame for damage done by so-called invasive species lies with us, when we have created an imbalance that opens opportunities for new species to move in. Tim goes beyond simply removing blame from our fellow species. He shows how erstwhile invaders can teach us how to heal damaged ecosystems and ourselves.

author of Gaias Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Per Toby Hemenway

Timothy Lee Scott shows how wrongheaded it is to single out other species as harmful. In nearly every case, the blame for damage done by so-called invasive species lies with us, when we have created an imbalance that opens opportunities for new species to move in. Tim goes beyond simply removing blame from our fellow species. He shows how erstwhile invaders can teach us how to heal damaged ecosystems and ourselves.

author of Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Home Toby Hemenway

"Invasive Plant Medicine is not only a keeper, but a healer."

“I love this book. Brilliant and unique, Tim Scott’s new book is about to rock the world of plant enthusiasts. Written for the medical professional, lay person, gardener, botanist, and biologist, it’s for everyone who loves and worships at the roots of the green world. Invasive Plant Medicine provides a refreshing new theology of ‘invasives,’ or ‘messenger’ plants as they are so aptly termed by the author. Tim Scott goes deep beneath the surface, where thought, practicality, and poetry combine to create a dynamic new exploration of common plant medicine. Poetic, wise, visionary, and practical, this is my new favorite book about plants.”

“So, be warned, this is a dangerous book. Tim Scott will change how you see ‘invasives,’ will make you question what you have been taught about them, force you to reexamine what you have read in newspapers, and demand you look more closely at what ‘experts’ have said.”

“This is an important, insightful book that should be read by all involved in herbal medicine or plant conservation, and more importantly, for all of us who should be questioning authority. In these times of rapid change it is refreshing to find such competent questioning of ‘established truths.’ Thanks, Tim!”

“Timothy Lee Scott shows how wrongheaded it is to single out other species as harmful. In nearly every case, the blame for damage done by so-called invasive species lies with us, when we have created an imbalance that opens opportunities for new species to move in. Tim goes beyond simply removing blame from our fellow species. He shows how erstwhile invaders can teach us how to heal damaged ecosystems and ourselves.

From the Publisher

So, be warned, this is a dangerous book. Tim Scott will change how you see ‘invasives,’ will make you question what you have been taught about them, force you to reexamine what you have read in newspapers, and demand you look more closely at what ‘experts’ have said.

Stephen Harrod Buhner

Timothy Lee Scott shows how wrongheaded it is to single out other species as harmful. In nearly every case, the blame for damage done by so-called invasive species lies with us, when we have created an imbalance that opens opportunities for new species to move in. Tim goes beyond simply removing blame from our fellow species. He shows how erstwhile invaders can teach us how to heal damaged ecosystems and ourselves.

Toby Hemenway

I love this book. Brilliant and unique, Tim Scott’s new book is about to rock the world of plant enthusiasts. Written for the medical professional, lay person, gardener, botanist, and biologist, it’s for everyone who loves and worships at the roots of the green world. Invasive Plant Medicine provides a refreshing new theology of ‘invasives,’ or ‘messenger’ plants as they are so aptly termed by the author. Tim Scott goes deep beneath the surface, where thought, practicality, and poetry combine to create a dynamic new exploration of common plant medicine. Poetic, wise, visionary, and practical, this is my new favorite book about plants.

Rosemary Gladstar