Part 3: Critical Mass of Plant Medicine
Part 4: The Identification Process
Bilingual author and up the road neighbor Jonathan Olivier who runs Frozard Comunity Garden had always been an ally. In 2021 he wrote an article for Bitter Southerner Magazine about plant medicine. In the article he talked about this rabbit tobacco, and the information he gathered was pivotal in answering a question as well as raising one. In my own independent identification process I was down to two contenders: pearly everlasting and sweet everlasting. Jonathan's article documented the story of native faith healers, namely Madame Teresa Dardar of the Pointe-au-Chien Indian Tribe in Pointe-aux-Chênes, Louisiana. It stated:
“One [hard to find plant] is vinéraire, or pearly everlasting.
Although it isn’t native to the Southeast, oral histories show
it has been commonly used in tea in Louisiana and was cultivated
by indigenous people. ”
And there it was, my smoking gun: the French name: vinéraire.As a collector of oral histories myself for la Prairie des Femmes, I knew there was an element of error that must be taken into consideration. While it was true that pearly everlasting is not native to the southeast, i.e. Louisiana, fragrant sweet everlasting is. As I stood in my vinéraire patch 40 miles from the gulf, I asked myself why the natives of down the bayou would trade pearly everlasting when they had something locally and more fragrant growing natively right here. It was another meeting with Jonathan where I gathered that the people he interviewed were unclear on what the plant was ( I understood why after all the tracas I had been through to Id it) because since the hurricanes Hilda and Ida, saltwater intrusion had made this sensitive plant just a memory to the traiteurs of down the bayou.
Part 7: Big Bill as the Voice of God
Part 9: The Prairie has a memory.
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