Wild Thyme: Frickin' Medicinal Plants Everywhere!

Pun fully intended on that one of course... :-P

Tonight I went on the Venture Outdoors-sponsored Medicinal Plant Walk at Frick Park! Hope you're up for a slightly far-out analogy, cause I'm about to throw one... Having an actual teacher pointing things out, to me, was like taking an airplane to California! You know, instead of a 3-4 day drive, it's like *boop* and it plops you back down on the ground, 9 or so states away from when you boarded, in 3-hours' time. OK, so it felt the same way having a teacher, because I didn't have to do so much legwork! It was an instant thing; as soon as I saw the intended plant, I had a name to it and some specs about it! A very nice luxury.

It really was a great time, and I learned so much! The cool thing is, I learned about all the things on my current Question list. I wanted to find coltsfoot without the flower, I wanted to find dandelion without the flower. I see the flowers in the spring and summer, then they lose the flowers and just their base leaves are left and not always easy to spot (coltsfoot leaves can get BIG through the summer!)

I wanted to find them in the fall, because the fall is a good time to harvest roots. Through the spring and summer, all the nutrients the plants are taking in are whisked around to flowers and foliage, and though the roots would still be helpful, they're even more nutritious in the fall once the nutrients are stored more in the roots. The same is true about the spring, before the plants flower! The roots have collected nutrients through the fall and winter months, and come spring, they're loaded once again! I'll be adding some pics soon, but I can only stay online til 11 tonight, cause I've got some other things to do...

We identified the following, and potentially more that I don't remember just yet. Please stop back soon to see pics and any additional things I may've forgotten!

-Coltsfoot