Written by: Dr. Frannie Koe, MD
Editing and Photography by: Breanne Brazeale
Alabama is not only beautiful; it is also incredibly rich in its biological diversity! I am so fortunate to call this place home. Over the years, I have learned that my property on the side of Sand Mountain is full of medicinal herbs and foods to forage!
Several years ago, I was lucky to have Darryl Patton, renowned folk herbalist and longtime student of the late A.L. “Tommie” Bass, host a brief series of herbal education classes on my property. Darryl, known as the Southern Herbalist, has been studying edible and medicinal plants in Alabama and the Southern Appalachian region for over three decades.
During one class, he led a small group of us on a walk down the driveway of my rural farm property. In less than 50 feet, we found dozens of beneficial plants! I had hibiscus, several types of pine, mimosa, mint, wild lettuce, sweet gum, crimson clover, plantain, persimmon, chickweed, and dogwood, just to name a few. We all have dandelion growing in our yards. There are also a variety of mushrooms and fungi, ginseng and lots of others growing on my property, but I have not yet learned to identify them confidently on my own.
Besides the abundance of native wild medicinal plants growing naturally on my property, I have added elderberry, stinging nettle, comfrey, lemon balm, rosemary, turmeric and ginger to my garden. With so many plants to choose from, it can be a little overwhelming when choosing which to study first.
One of my goals for AgroshareMD.com is to provide high quality, easily accessible education across a variety of categories. I am a lifelong student, and I hoped that by sharing some of my personal journeys, it might make the idea of diving into a new topic of study a little less intimidating. I am always trying to broaden my horizons, and am fascinated by the possibilities of using herbs and wild plants as food and medicine.
This is a huge topic, so my plan is to work through each plant that I can easily identify on my property, and put them in my Materia Medica. I will start with safe, easy to identify and grow botanicals, especially those I harvest and use on a daily (or very frequent basis) such as lemon balm, nettle, passionflower, tulsi (holy basil), and more.
As I write about them and research them (and grow them throughout the seasons), I will learn how best to use them for food and medicine. Because I have several diverse ecosystems on my farm, including a pine thicket, a chert pit, open fields, a mountainside, and a waterfall, I can likely find hundreds of wild foods and herbs to learn about! I hope you will follow along on my journey as I learn more about the abundance of food and medicinal herbs growing in Northeast Alabama.
