Berry Magic

Hello and welcome to a much delayed blog! My blog temporarily became non-existent (mainly because I forgot the name of the Gmail account I had it under!). A bit of detective work and going through old emails caused me to rediscover it-phew!

I've been much less active on the blog than I'd have liked to have been this summer-a combination of being really busy with clinic, teaching, the garden and studying for my PGCHE.

Didn't we have the most wonderful summer though? I ran a couple of full-day workshops, one making remedies from my herb garden (From Herb Garden to Medicine Chest) and a new workshop (Elixirs and Edibles), both went well and we had great fun.

Despite the late Spring-Mother Nature soon caught up and we had a mass of blossom which has now turned into bountiful fruit and berries, so I thought I’d share the first of a couple of berry recipes with you.

The first is for Hawthorn berries-it’s not too late to collect them now!

 

Hawthorn (Crataegus monogyna) is our most common hedging plant in the UK and is commonly known as May blossom. It's a member of the Rose family and it has been used as a food plant for centuries. My parents grew up in rural Carmarthenshire and often reminisce of days spent exploring and playing, sustained by the young leaves of “Bara Caws” or “Bread and Cheese”, an old country name for Hawthorn.

It is thought of as a magical plant and it was sacred to Cardea, the Roman Goddess of the Hinge "By means of her divine presence she opens things that have been closed, and closes things that have been opened." 

She had a death aspect and bringing Hawthorn flowers in to the house would allow her in to the house where she would eat any children she found. It is said that the smell of Hawthorn flowers is reminiscent of the smell of the Plague, or Black Death.

Hawthorn is still regarded as a sacred tree and shouldn't be disturbed. When DeLorean were building their factory in Northern Ireland, there was an old Faery mound with a Hawthorn tree on top in the way. None of the local Irish builders would touch it-in the end John DeLorean flattened it with a bulldozer. The company went bankrupt 5 years later.

Many hedgerow plants are medicines as well as food and Hawthorn is a good example of this. For its medicinal uses, old herbals recommend it for kidney stones and gout, and Culpepper recommends it for “dropsy”, an old word for heart failure. It not until relatively recently that it has been known as a universal heart or cardiac tonic.

We now know, through modern research that Hawthorn is “heart-sparing”. It is able to dilate the coronary arteries and strengthen the heart muscle without raising blood pressure or increasing the heart rate. In Germany it is viewed as “the nurse of the ageing heart” and is often prescribed to the over 50’s.

There is no one constituent that can be attributed to the medicinal effects of Hawthorn, a good example of a basic philosophy in Herbal Medicine, that “The whole is greater than the sum of the parts”. Although we do know that the flavanoid compounds called procyanidins help to normalise blood pressure. Hawthorn can be combined with other hedgerow medicines such as Yarrow, Ramsons and Lime blossom to help improve the circulation.

As Medical Herbalists we use both the flowering tops and berries or haws to treat high blood pressure, enlargement of the heart and angina in combination with Convallaria rusticana (Lily of the Valley) and Leonorus cardiaca (Motherwort). It helps dissolve cholesterol and calcium deposits, reducing the effects of arteriosclerosis, or hardening of the arteries. (It is important to state that heart disease is a life-threatening illness, and should be treated by a qualified health care professional such as your GP or qualified herbalist. If you are taking betablockers, please only take Hawthorn under supervision).

You can however, take Hawthorn daily to help maintain your heart health.

Many fruits and berries can be made into syrups, but syrups have a limited shelf-life. Another option is to make leathers. The use of fruit or berry leathers are ancient, being a regular staple of hunter-gatherer groups in Paleolithic times. The advantages is that if there is a fruit glut, it is a means of reducing volume, and at the same time allows preservation.

 

This method (thanks Ray Mears) is dehydrator/dessicator free for making Hawthorn berry leathers:

Make sure to wash the Hawthorn berries thoroughly after collection. They freeze really well to store for later. 

Interestingly, I was chatting with a workshop attendee recently (Hi Laura!) who had had some difficulty with this recipe and we reflected on the fact that I always (out of convenience) always freeze my berries before making the leathers, which I think softens them. This is also backed up by an observation made by a Finnish herbalist Henriette Kress who told me that freezing was the only way to make Finnish Hawthorn berries in anyway workable.

1. Use ripe Hawthorn berries and place in a saucepan. Just cover in water or apple juice. Do not add too much fluid, as you will have to dry this off later.
2. Simmer gently for about 15 minutes and allow to cool. 
3.Blend or mash the pulp briefly to loosen the pulp from the seeds-then rub the pulp through a coarse sieve.

4. At this stage you can add honey to taste if you wish.
5. Pour this strained pulp onto a baking paper on a baking tray so that it is less than 1 cm thin and place in the oven for approximately 2-4 hours. Leave to dry in the oven at its lowest setting.

6. Leave until the pulp is dry and leathery and can be peeled off the trays, without sticking together.
7. Cut with a scissors and store in an air tight jar. If dried and stored properly they will easily last for a year and are also quite delicious!

Eat about 2 cm square daily to keep your heart and circulation healthy.

For my next post (very soon) I’ll be sharing a very special syrup made from Elderberries-so you’ve just got time to go and harvest them and pop some in the freezer.

I often run workshops on hedgerow remedies-so join my mailing list if you’d like further information.