The Good Herb Puzzle

mintHerbs! What’s not to love? Because they’re the leafy part of the plant (rather than the bark, seed or root, which are considered spices), they’re one of the first signs of spring to grace the dinner table. Seriously, if there’s no basil plant sunning itself in your garden or on your windowsill by now, remedy that oversight; it will repay you a thousand times over in herb butter and pesto this summer.

But I digress. Test how well you really know your herbs by trying to name the correct one for each of the fun facts listed below. This is a tough one, guys, so if you manage to get even half, consider yourself a perfect herbivore.

  1. A belief in ancient Greece held that this herb (whose name comes for the Greek word for king) would only grow if you screamed curses while planting the seeds.
  2. An English tradition is to plant large patches of this herb as a playground for fairies.
  3. Some people have a gene that causes them to experience this herb as having a nasty soapy flavor.
  4. Some mothers take this herb to help with lactation, but a sweet side effect is that it can make their sweat and urine smell like maple syrup.
  5. This flowering herb prized mostly for its scent was thought to protect the wearer from the bubonic plague when worn around the wrist.
  6. In ancient Rome, this was the most important medicinal herb, so important that our word for it comes from the Latin term meaning “to save.”
  7. This herb is associated with the Virgin Mary, because there’s a story that the flowers of the plant got their color after she placed her blue shawl on one of the bushes to dry it.
  8. This herb has been found in Egyptian tombs dating back to 1000 BC, and Mexicans like it so much that they call it simply yerba buena, meaning “good herb.”

Don’t scroll down or click “Continue” until you’re reedy for the answers! Continue reading

East Nashville’s Resident Apothacary Wizards

On a recent visit to Nashville, my brother introduced me to High Garden, an “old fashioned apothecary herb and tea shop,” in the proto-gentrifying neighborhood called East Nashville.  The location felt appropriate to me because this is the kind of store that in New York would detonate like a bomb in Williamsburg or play the beckoning outpost empty warehouses in Bushwick.  But High Garden is not in Brooklyn.  It is far too charmingly humble and reasonably priced to be so.  When I walk into the shop, I want to buy everything.

High Garden is a bit like something out of The Shire or else from a hard-pack crossroads where friars and maidens going this way chew the fat with knights and knaves going that way.  I love the place, and not just because I’m at least 1/3 a hippie. High Garden is kind of magic.  Glass jars containing herbs and teas both familiar and obscure cover the back wall floor to ceiling.  Need lung wort, yarrow, or kava kava?  Not sure at all what ashwaghandra, milk thistle, or catuaba bark are for?  Well, you’re in luck because owner Leah Larabell not only sells them but thoroughly knows this stuff like the back of her hand.  She’s a trained counselor specializing in teens and adolescents, but this—the ages-old wisdom of which plant is good for which of our ailments—is obviously a passion.

Present Leah with any number of symptoms and she’ll ask a few questions, cross to her jars, and mix together in a silver bowl on a wooden table teas and herbs to address your needs.  I told her, for example, that I sleep like hell, am frequently anxious or angry, and just might be prone to the occasional delusion about the fabric of the world (though maybe you’re the delusional one, buddy) and the woman nodded, went to her jars, got to work.  While this went on, her husband and co-owner Joel spooned gourmet tea blends into tea bags and poured me a milk-steamed Oolong and orange drink that was a crackerjack transposition of a creamsickle into beverage form. Continue reading