Mt Davidson medicinal weeds walk with SFLiFE

[Guest guest]

Several SFVS members joined Dorleen's SFLiFE on this wonderful hike last week;

here's the report.

 

Hours after we did a Spring Forward for Daylight Savings Time, Hoenie Luk of the

California Native Plant Society led SFLiFE members & friends on a very

informative & entertaining medicinal plant walk at Mt. Davidson. He prepared an

English/Chinese language handout listing 45 trees, shrubs & herbs—noting native

& non-native plants. Being so knowledgeable & patient, Hoenie actually pointed

out a lot more plants & answered our many questions during our 1-1/2 hour walk.

 

Hoenie explained the medicinal uses of each plant based on traditional Chinese,

Native American and Western medicine. Ideally, the whole plant or parts (roots,

fruits, barks, leaves, flower, seeds) are used because they contain synergistic

elements that neutralize any negative effects of any potential toxins contained

in a plant.

 

About 5,000 plants are used in Traditional (TCM), of which only

about 100 are cultivated and the rest are collected in the wild. As popularity

of TCM and herbs grows, overharvesting is a challenge . . . as well as the use

of roundup pesticide sprayed on Mt. Davidson's area so we didn't ingest any of

the plants during our hike.

 

Check out photos at

SFLivingFoods/photos/album/2060549982/pic/list