In 2012 there was a persistent maple syrup smell that hung in the back of my pasture. Having had enough familiarity with the other medicines, remedies and prairie plants, I began to scrutinize the individual plants in the back corner, and it was easy to find the one. I often identify familiar plants for my own needs through crushing the leaves and smelling them. If you know a plant well and work with it, this method is reliable. This plant's smell was unique. At that time I had babies and so after some crude identification (it was pseudoghaphalium obtusifolium aka fragrant rabbit tobacco, life everlasting, vinéraire), I let the season pass. Each time I returned to the back pasture it was no longer in that spot.
I still looked occasionally and asked around about a plant with this maple smell, but I lost it. Eventually I arrived at a time when I had a mental critical mass of native plant experience through my transcriptions of my hometown's Creole folklore. Sometimes I would set an intention to find a plant like herbe à vers, aka wormseed (to make the traditional de-worming praline) or herbe à malo, aka lizard's tail (to make the teething necklace) and go out and find them within a week somewhere in the prairie or swamp. It was in this way that in the summer of 2023 I finally found three vinéraire plants again in the side pasture. I cleared the other plants from around her and allowed her to grow. I also began to carry a spring with me everywhere I went. I sat with the plant often and began to use it medicinally and spiritually. I never left home without it in this time and it was with me through some tough times and gave me comfort for its smell, softness and as I began to learn, rarity.
In this time I had a meeting with some local professors and horticulturalists who I shared my curiosity with. They knew what it was but were incredulous that I had found it by smell in the pasture, but I had. They eventually produced letters and contacts of local healers and Indigenous women who were many years in search of the plant, because it was hard to find down the bayou.
I learned that it's a plant that comes when the prairie is healing and becoming more diverse, but that it usually grows in undisturbed prairies, which my field is not; it was farmed for decades. Still remnants may remain at the edges.
Over the last three years I have observed this plant at all stages and seasons, through snow and drought. It likes dry edge and poor soil. This could be one of the reasons that it appeared here, among others. It has spread voluntarily across my back pasture from three to around 600 (this year, so far) individual plants. It has spread on its own, under conditions that I monitor, and does not yet grow where I plant it.
I make sprays, balms and burn it regularly as one would burn sage. I have documented its native uses, etymologies in Creole, French and Choctaw, as well as its extensive spiritual connections. I have shared in ongoing art exhibits such as Botanica at the Louisiana State Museum at the Cabildo in New Orleans as well as the Prairie Stories exhibit Acadiana Center for the Arts in Lafayette, Louisiana. I have given lectures about it for several college classes in Louisiana and out of state, as well as at Basin Arts, Academy of the Sacred Heart, Nunu's, Atelier de Nature and at a workshop at Balfa Week.
I have had the most satisfying honor of providing the plant and seed to the women and men who were in search of it, as well as herbalists, traiteurs, healers, and a few of the members of the Indigenous tribes in order to return its medicine to the people of south Louisiana.
