You’ve chosen an herb. You’ve opened a new page in your materia medica. Then you search for the plant online. Within minutes, you may have dozens of tabs open, each telling you what the herb is “good for,” how people have traditionally used it, what compounds it contains, what a study supposedly found, or how … Read more
Search for an online herbalism course for beginners and you’ll quickly have more options than answers. One school emphasizes hundreds of hours of instruction. Another promises a gentle introduction. One is almost entirely self-paced. Another includes live classes. Some focus heavily on medicine making. Others emphasize materia medica, botany, body systems, traditional frameworks, gardening, clinical … Read more
You write something useful in a notebook. A week later, you save another version in your phone. Then there’s a screenshot you meant to file, a few notes from an herbal book, a course PDF with highlights, three browser tabs, and a binder you started because the first notebook was getting messy. The problem isn’t … Read more
A single herb can come with an intimidating amount of information. Common name. Scientific name. Plant family. Plant part. Preparations. Constituents. Herbal actions. Traditional uses. Safety notes. Growing information. Research. New vocabulary you hadn’t heard of yesterday. Then you open another herb profile and start again. It’s easy to reach the conclusion that learning herbalism … Read more
The first time you see the words materia medica in an herbal book or course, they can sound much more complicated than they need to. Is it a textbook? A journal? A database? A list of herbs? Something only trained herbalists use? In herbal study, a materia medica is essentially an organized reference about individual … Read more
A beginner herbal notebook can fill up surprisingly fast. One page has notes about chamomile. The next has a list of tincture terms. Then there are screenshots about five other plants, a book recommendation you meant to look up, and half a page about something completely different that sounded interesting at the time. You’ve collected … Read more
If you’re trying to learn herbalism and currently have a stack of books, several saved Instagram posts, a Pinterest board full of herbs, and fourteen browser tabs open, you probably don’t need another list of 50 things to study. You need a starting point. Herbalism can lead you toward plants, botany, preparation methods, traditional practices, … Read more
A blank materia medica page can create a strange problem. You wanted a better way to organize what you’re learning about herbs. Then you find a template with twenty or thirty empty boxes: botanical name, family, constituents, energetics, actions, habitat, preparations, safety, harvesting, history, research… Now instead of studying the herb, you’re trying to figure … Read more