This winter I started taking a different look at the plants immediately around our woodland home because I want to learn more about the lifecycles of local plants.  I want to be able to better identify them at all stages, rather than just the most obvious ones such as when they are flowering.  I also want to be able to gather some plants at various stages for different purposes.

And because I am forgetful, I also am making notes of WHERE I find things so that I can find them again later.  

What really is interesting to me is how many of the local green growing things are NOT native to this area.  So far I noted 16 plants that are coming up nearby, and, of those, 10 are not native to this continent at all.  A few are naturalized, but some are unwelcome.  (For those who do not know me, I am mundanely located in West Virginia.)

So I am cataloging the plants as Native or Non-Native (though some institutions use the term Exotic).  I am also including location where it originated and whether it is Naturalized to the area or Invasive.

• Native plants, simply put, are those that belong here and have historically been here.  
• Non-Native plants evolved in another location (quite frequently that location is listed as Eurasia).  They might have been brought here as garden items or been brought accidently as seeds with other cargo.
• Naturalized plants are Non-Natives but that have adapted to live here without harming the local ecosystem.
• Invasive plants are those that threaten the local systems and can crowd out Native plants.

Over the next few years I hope to introduce additional Native plants to the yard here.  Things like Serviceberries for our field and trying to eradicate the highly invasive Stiltgrass in the shaded front yard and encourage plants like Wild Ginger, Bloodroot and Mountain Mint instead.

I have also mentioned another Invasive here on my blog, Garlic Mustard.  I happily eat my fill of this in the spring and fully murder the rest.  I walked the lane leading into our property yesterday and saw very little of it coming up this year, compared to the last few, likely due to my willful destruction of every bit that I could find.

I am hoping to do some more campfire cooking in the next few weeks, and am eager to include some of the things growing around the house, including chickweed, hairy bittercress and spring onions... possibly even violets and redbuds if they are ready.

I mentioned in a much earlier post (HERE) that gloves or mittens would come in very handy for handling some of the plants around here, such as poison ivy.  They are also essential, of course, for keeping warm.  I decided to make a pair of medieval split mittens as seen in the Luttrell Psalter.  

The Luttrell Psalter shows both solid colored mittens and those that are particolored.  The Tübingen house book has an image of mittens that show fur at the bottom edge.  I think many (or most) of these split mittens were likely crafted out of pelts with fur/wool on the inside.  This very much simplifies the construction, as you can do butted seams with the edges of the leather, and there are no bulky seam allowances to worry about.  

I do not have a pelt I can currently cut up, and I am still trying to use items from my stash as much as possible for my projects, so I choose to work in wool.  I have some lovely coating weight wool with a heavily brushed (and warm!) surface on one side.  This cloth will fray, but not readily as it is well fulled.  This means that, while sturdy, I cannot rely on a butted seam for the construction.  This presented some issues as I need seam allowances and to get that in the the split of the mitten I would need to have the finger chambers angled awkwardly outwards.  A gusset in the split could work, but not for my tiny hands because it again creates bulky seams too close together.

My solution was to treat the mittens as I think the parti-colored option could be constructed, and add a seam down the center to join the two halves of the mitten.

I used the basic pattern from Medieval Tailor's Assistant and eliminated the gusset and added the center seam.  I did my first test in some heavy synthetic fleece, recrafted the pattern to fit my hand and worked one up in the wool.  That still was not quite right, so I worked from that to create a thir pattern from which I made my final gloves.  I am very pleased with the results and might eventually make a parti-colored pair!

Don't sew and need mittens?  Historic Enterprises also sells split mittens!

I decided on a male persona for my Forester work mostly because I like the clothing and I really like the idea of chausses because the chiggers in the summer here are just off the charts annoying.  I do plan to make 14th Century English women's clothing as well (mostly because I can get away with sandals that way at Pennsic, and because I have always loved that classic 'medieval' look).

But it is interesting that, in period, both roles that I am pursuing, Forester and Apothecary, could be held by women during the Middle Ages.  I had already read a fair bit about female apothecaries but the following article was posted to the Atlantian Forestry group on Face book discusses female Foresters in the 13th century in England.  This is key because it gave me better insight into how the position of Forester in Fee worked, and that my persona idea (being trained as an apothecary in London but returned to the family home to take over the Forester role after the plague wiped out my persona's father and older brother) is actually viable and not as convoluted as it sounds.

The article is HERE for those interested.  

This fall I harvested some dried mullein stalks to coat with flammables and attempt to use as torches.  I read in several "articles" online that mullein torches were used by the Romans.  Why the quotes?  Because not a one of those actually cite a viable source for that information.  I do not know whether it is legit or not (Roman period is not my research thing), but folklore also refers to these as "witch candles" so I thought I would give it a test regardless.  I will note that in On Simples, attributed to Dioscorides there is a reference to Mullein being used as lamp wicks and it is also called "lampwick", so that I will definitely be checking out in the future as well.

So last month I coated some of the stalks with wax.  Because of the cost of beeswax and my desire not to waste any, I chose not to fill a tall vessel and dip the stalks.  Rather, I melted a small portion and dipped the tip and just ladled the liquid wax over the rest and watched it soak in to the very dry material.  Modernly you can find mullein candles from neopagan vendors who very heavily coat them, truly making them candle-like in appearance.  They sell them as a less appropriative replacement for white sage for smudging (not a bad thing at all).

The initial test had a 3 inch flower head that gave me 5.5 minutes of well-lit burn time.  I used approximately 1.75 ounces of wax to coat the 4 stalks I had (3-4ish inches).

​Because wax likely had better uses than a quick burning torch in period, I decided to look at other viable options for this process and purchased some beef tallow and used up some expired olive oil and also vegetable (soybean) oil that was left over from frying schnitzel.

For this round I used 4 inch plants, all dressed in the same fashion (with the tip held in the oil and oil ladled down the stalk until it was well coated).  I labeled them and stood them up as I did before, lit the tops and timed them.

While the lengths of the flower heads on these were all similar, they were not exact down to the millimeter and I had no way to check for density, so some might have been heavier than others.  So this truly is not scientific, but still gave me a feel for how well the different fats performed.

In the image below, the wax is on the left, tallow, then olive oil and the vegetable oil on the far right.  The wax caught most readily and produced the most light for the duration of it's burn.  It is the only one that really acted as a "torch" for the entire duration.

The tallow performed well, but the bright light it started with settled down to something a bit better than a really good candle.  The two plant oils were more candle like until the last 5 minutes of their burn time.

At the end of ithe beeswax burned brightly for 18:42 (18 minutes, 42 seconds).  The tallow burned for 27:26 and the vegetable oil burned for 25:38.  The olive oil was burned for 21:01, but I also had to relight it at one point because it was very much struggling to really get going.

Also, I had a helper, because of course I did.  He feels that I finally have set the appropriate alter for his divine presence.

For the SCA Foresters' Guild there are requirements to progress from one rank to the next.  Æthelmearc currently is falling under the East Kingdom and the Checklist, as well as other pertinent documents with rules and regulations, can be found HERE.  

Once you swear the Forester's oath, you can work towards different goals within the guild.  This is one thing I love about some of the guilds within the SCA.  They give you tangible goals, AND have people willing to jump in and help you along the way.  (Another great guild with goals is the Company of the Silver Spindle in Atlantia.

 I took the Oath at Pennsic and now am starting on working towards Underforester.  For this you need to start a fire, cook a meal for one, have some green garb and participate in camping (yes, Pennsic camping counts).  Most of my garb is green, but the Forester kit I am building out has that goal in mind.  Currently I have green chausses and hood, along with a brown wool and blue linen tunic.  Eventually I will have a green wool and a green linen tunic as well.  I have cloth for two green cloaks as well, I just need to get them cut out.  

The next rank is Forester.  For this you need period gear and equipment (working on it).  Period shoes (have them).  Full forester garb (technically have that except that cloak that needs cut out, BUT I want to revise the garb I made this year already).  You need to be helpful and cook for a group over a fire.  And you need to start a fire with a period method.  I have done this in the past several times with flint and steel, but my technique is, um, rusty.  I also started a fire with charcloth and a magnifying glass at the Shire Day in the Park this past June.  I tried to do it today, and got the charcloth to catch and started to get my nest going but the flax that I was using as the base of the nest was not catching.  Like, it was REALLY, not catching.  It came from a very damp room and I think that it might have taken on moisture?  I used this same flax years ago with no issues but it honestly did not want to take right away even with a lighter (which I ended up using just to keep things moving.

So, enough about what went wrong, lets talk about what went right!  I had a great time.  I chose a semi-flat spot near a fallen tree in an area where there is no grass or other growth to worry about burning.  I also opted for Safety First and had a can of water and a fire extinguisher stashed nearby.  We live in the woods, it is autumn so leaves are falling, and we have not had rain in several days.  I also used some stones to build a small firebreak on the downhill side from where I was working.  

​You can see my staged area below, as well as the stages of my fire.  I had wood ready, and yes, I did use a few sticks of fatwood.  I currently do not have period cooking pots, but did use a small dutchoven, griddle and a little clay vessel I made myself (it is actually a pinch pot for early Celtic stuff, but it is what I have).  I have two trivets from Rabenwald Metalsmything but only needed the shorter one for this project.  I used a tent stake for lifting the pot around and removing and replacing the lid.

So, what was I going to make?  I wanted to do more than just make random food to fill a checklist.  I wanted something period appropriate to my persona.  So, my assumption here is that I would actually be traveling from London where my persona's uncle lives, back to his own home in York, and realistically, I was not traveling alone as that was very much asking for trouble.  We would have more than bare minimum gear with us.

So my personal checklist is:

• Period food items for my persona
• At least somewhat period methods of cooking/compiling them
• Ingredients that would be in season at the same time

​
In the end I opted for a:

• Dish of parsnips and onions
• Apples with cinnamon and honey
• Flat breads (rye and oat)
• Cheese (for this I opted for Brie that I had at home already)
• I choose to go vegetarian for this as, in additional to Lenten Fridays, there were many days during the 14th Century in England where meat was not allowed

My foodstuffs can be seen below.  Most of these vessels are NOT period to my persona, and while some are close (the glass containers), I would not be slinging those around during travel.  I would also definitely not be traveling with two heavy mortar and pestle sets, but I needed to grind the cinnamon for the apples so took them outside to work on while the fire was reducing to coals.

While the fire was making coals for me, I went ahead and started the onions in the pot with butter.  This is a modern sweet onion as I have serious sensitivity to onion and do not react to this type IF it is cooked until completely dead.  I also have some apple and butter in the earthenware pot.  I have not fire tested my own pottery yet, so did not want to sit this directly in a bed of coals at this time.

When my onions cooked down some, I added the chopped parsnips and continued to cook those close to the fire, stirring often.  When the fire died down enough, I moved the Dutch Oven to sit directly over coals.

Once the parsnips started to soften a little and the onions were VERY cooked, I added white wine, water and a bit of salt.

While this was cooking I mixed up a little olive oil into the rye and oat flour with a touch of salt and a small amount of honey.  I formed these into little patties and put them on the griddle that I had preheated with butter.  For the griddle I am using the low trivet and it is placed directly over coals.

Did I mention the apples were taking forever?  I was not quite ready to explode my drinking cup with high heat, so I ended up finishing the apples on the griddle with the flat breads.

Before dumping them from the cup onto the griddle I stirred in a bit of the cinnamon I ground.  Part of my research on medieval apothecary revealed that the cinnamon sold in the US is typically cassia, a similar plant, but not true cinnamon.  I do, however, keep celyon cinnamon sticks in the house as I have a friend who is allergic to cassia, and I ground one of those for this project.

To finish off my main course, I added the foraged sorrel as well as the harvested chives and parsley to the pot, along with a little more water and wine.  Then I did a very period thing and thickened the whole thing with bread crumbs (from old bread that I foraged in my kitchen).  I believe that bread, a staple of the medieval diet, could easily be bought in towns we would pass through, and eventually one might have an older hunk not really suitable for a meal, even while traveling. 

The photo to the right shows the veggie dish right before I added the lid and set the whole thing over coals to finish it off.

So how was it all?

Honestly?  It was excellent.  I forgot to add the honey to the apples so drizzled it on at the end.  (My persona, as an apothecary, would have ready access to both honey and several types of sugar, so sweetening a dish is not unreasonable.)

The parsnips and onions were quite savory and had an almost lemony twang with the addition of the sorrel (locally called "sour grass").  The bread crumbs thickened the broth so that it clung to the vegetables making it more "main course" to me than it would have as a soup.

The flat breads were good, but a bit crumbly.  They might be made better with a different source of fat (butter, tallow or lard), which is something I can experiment with later.  I went with the olive oil because I had it handy here.

And yes, I had help from local wildlife with my meal prep and with helping eat the rind from the Brie!

​Also, I did this in garb!

As I have mentioned before, we live in the woods in Appalachia.  The property is loaded with all sorts of animals, including white-tailed deer, opossums, raccoons, gray squirrels, a variety of mice and other small rodents.  We also have many types of songbirds, ravens, barred-owls, and red-shouldered hawks.  American Black Ducks sometimes nest in the field as well and Canadian Geese have raised their young in the stream on the property.  In addition to that, the property has a feral cat colony that we TNR and support as we can (you can follow the feline adventures HERE).
 

The creek itself has small fish such as minnows.  It also is a state-stocked stream for trout from February through May.  We also have crawdads, loads of them, and occasionally they are large enough to get claw meat out of!
 
This summer when family was here fishing for crawdads, I had an idea that I would try to assemble a primitive trap and catch some myself.  I finally had time to do it this weekend to test this out.
 
First though, crayfish are period for my persona.  Not this species (apparently American ones are invasive in England and they practically beg people to catch and eat them, article HERE), but they were a viable food source.  The Medieval Histories blog has a nice article that lead me to an early 16th century painting of crawfish catching in Austria as well as a stellar image of a clay trap that I hope to replicate this winter.

In the painting, which comes from the Fishing Book of Maximilian I, you can see a trap in one area of it, it is similar in shape to commercial traps you can buy today and I believe it works similarly to the style I opted to construct, even if it looks far more refined than mine.
 

​A fifteenth century painting from Lombardy possibly shows people dining on crayfish.  Unfortunately, the article that discusses this painting, “The Cultural History of Crayfish”, is not one I have been yet able to access by any means.  I do, however, wonder if these are actually meant to be lobsters?
 
And most importantly, it is detailed in Tacuinum Sanitatis, a commonplace book from Italy that was based on an 11th century Arabic medical work.  The book was reproduced in Latin from the 13th century onward and first printed in the 16th century.  This text notes that the nature of the crayfish is warm and dry in the second degree, with the optimal ones being fresh and yellow colored.  For uses?  They increase coitus (lol)! Danger in them is sleeping, but this can be neutralized by sprinkling them with almonds and olive oil.

​Typical of myself, I had another great reference for crayfish in the Middle Ages, but I was plowing through books at the time and not really taking notes.  When I find that again, I will amend this entry with the information.
 
Enough background, I decided to make a trap.  I did not really plan anything or research beyond anything mentioned above, and decided to go with a primitive trap style that I had vaguely seen on TV during one of the thousand episodes of reality survival shows that are a huge hit with my partner.  I understood the basic concept of using a cone within a cone that allows them to easily swim in to find the bait, but it makes it difficult for them to get back out.  I gave myself the parameter of using all foraged material, with the exception of some nettle yarn that I had in my stash.  Nettle is a bast fibre (along with things like linen and hemp) and these are very strong when wet.  This yarn is one that I had purchased some time ago for weaving but it is too coarse for most of the weaving I do, something which made it a great candidate for this (and it helps bust-the-stash). 

The uprights for both the inner and outer basket were harvested when I felled a dying lilac tree in the yard.  There were new shoots coming up that were delightfully straight and still pliable so I made use of those.  These were all cut out with modern loppers during the process of yardwork.

​For the woven pieces, I started foraging with just a knife (a modern survival type knife as I do not yet have a larger period one), but I have issues with my hands that forced me to resort to modern tools after about an hour of cutting branches.  I used the loppers (cannot find my pruners yet again) and scissors to finish the task.
 
I started by fashioning four hoops to fix the uprights too (two for each cone).  I used long, thin lilac shoots for these.  I tied heavier lilac shoots to those to form the base of the structure. 

I started weaving in the rest of the small lilac shoots in and out of the uprights until the whole basket was filled in.  I quickly ran out of lilac and tried several other types of plants on the property.  There is some type of young honeysuckle branches that worked fabulously as long as I harvested the newer ones (the older were too ‘woody’ and broke easily). Autumn Olive/Silverberry also worked well, provided, again, that I used only the younger branches.  Some things did not work at all, and those being the stems from Staghorn Sumac.  They were straight and pliable, but bend sharply with very little pressure.

Eventually I had raided all the viable honeysuckle and I had to quest a bit further and found a bit of vine from wild grapes.  Only a little of this was still pliable enough to work, but the moonseed vines were amazing, and the small inner basket was almost entirely comprised of that plant.
 
The inner basket fit well into the outer one but I was worried that smaller critters could slip out, so I stuffed in twists of invasive stiltgrass to fill in the gap between the two.

After baiting it with cat food (I had planned to use dinner leftovers but there were none), I took the trap to the creek last night and chose a somewhat deep (if you can call it that at this time of year) area and laid down the trap, using stones to hold the tail end down and a stick wedged under a log to keep it submerged. 
 
This morning, I dashed down to check my work, and I was delighted to find I had 5 decent sized (for this area) crawdads in the trap!  I initially thought it was four, but saw the fifth hiding in the bottom of it as I was getting ready to release the little guys back to the stream.
 

I am absolutely going to call this trap a success!  I doubt I will make another, it was very, very hard on my hands winding in all of those vines and branches, and construction took about 10 hours.  But I am drying this trap to test out again in the future.

Also, check out this weirdo crawfish (lobster?) from the Medieval Sketches of Villard de Honnecourt, from 13th Century France found on the Medievalist.net. 
​

Before you read the entry below, understand that I am NOT recommending any use of plants with out further research on your part.  I assume no responsibility for what ever dumb mistakes someone else might make.  I know that I can safely consume all items mentioned below because I have researched them (and compared to my own list of allergies, as well as drug allergies) and have safely consumed all items in the past.  Please read this entry on safety HERE.

In my entry here on Mullein, I noted that I wanted to test out Hildegard's cure for soar throats "with pain in the chest".  After harvesting mullein leaves over the last several days, I decided to go ahead and play around with this.

The problem here is that I am fairly certain now that the intention is to use fennel seeds and dried mullein leaves.  My leaves are not yet dry and I did not have seeds here but was able to procure fresh fennel so I figured "what the heck".  

It called for equal measure of the two plant items to be cooked in "good wine" and consumed often.  It does not, however give quantities for any of those items.  I also wondered, when I first read this, if measure for apothecaries in period was more commonly by weight or volume.  Eventually came across some recipes that called for spoonfuls of various things and that at least let me know that in some cases it was by volume.

I opted to make a single cup of wine with a tablespoon each of the two plants.  I chose these proportions based on modern recipes for mullein tea that make use of fresh, rather than dried, plants.  I simmered the chopped fennel and leaves for 15 minutes and let continue to steep as it cooled for another ten.  I strained it through a damp linen cloth into a cup.  In the photos I show it in a clear cup so that the color can be seen as well.

Regarding wine, when I first started looking into these things and noticed that so many recipes called for wine (yay!) I was wondering out loud on Facebook about what type of wine was available.  Some folks chimed in that old wine was used for medicinal concoctions, but I notice that many recipes specifically call for "good wine".  Further research also showed me that depending on the resources that someone in 14th century England had, there was a wide variety of wine available, both white and red, in many types.  English produced wine was white, imported could be either, and I saw that sweet wines were also imported from Greece and elsewhere.

The wine was still clear after the addition of the herbs and only had a slight herbal smell.  The taste was not unpleasant, and as you swallowed it you got a better sense of the herbs in it.  I think, lol, that my wine was starting to turn as it was more sour than it should be and that only increased with cooking.  The concoction was interesting, and I wish I had thought of making this two weeks ago when I did, in fact, have a sore throat.  

I will be procuring fennel seed soon and can repeat this experiment with the dried plant matter as I believe was intended in period.

​The Old English Herbarium has Mullien having such properties as rendering someone carrying it fearless in face of terror or if approached by wild beasts (Medieval Herbal Remedies, p181).  Another use is as a cure for gout that is rendered by bruising the leaves and placing the plant on the sore spot whereafter the patient will be able to walk in a few hours.  


This leads me to something I have been wondering since the outset of this project.  Often there is nothing to distinguish whether a plant might be needed fresh or dried for it to be deemed useful. This has led me to wonder if some remedies were only available in the summer.  For this example, that the leaves need to be bruised is key.  That indicates a fresh plant.  Fortunately for medieval people, the leaves of the first year plants often remain green in the winter (second year will dry up after flowering).

n her work, Hildegard notes that Mullien cooked with meat and “no other seasoning” and eaten often will strengthen the heart and make one happy.  For a hoarse voice or soar throat with pain in the chest, cook the Mullien with an equal amount of fennel in good wine, straining through a cloth and drinking often. (p115)

As mentioned before, the book Leechcraft discusses possible confusion with this plan an a variety of others.  It notes that an early English plant named “molin” is another item that could be our modern Mullien, and that this plant had sedative properties and was used widely for centuries for coughs and diarrhea and as lamp wicks.  (P142)

That last is one thing that I have read over and over in folklore or entries online for this plant.  This fascinates me.  I have seen references to it being used by miners in the US as torches, by ancient Roman’s to light the way in funeral processions and it being supposedly used by witches.  None of these sources were particularly academic, but I still am very intrigued.  I have seen it mentioned that they are dipped in tallow, wax or oil to produce the Mullien torch.  I have collected some stalks and plan to test them with both beeswax and olive oil.  The hope is to test these out at some point this week.

I also have gathered some leaves and will be drying them to add to the apothecary that I am building.
​

Persona Summary:

• This plant existed in 14th Century England, though the English sources are ambiguous as to which plant is which where this is concerned.  It was used and noted elsewhere so it is quite possibly something that would have been known
• Plausible foraged or cultivated medicinal source (add to my personal apothecary)

Projects:

• Test out how well the flower stalks work as torches
• Test out Hildegard's recipes for both sore throat and as an additive to meat merely to see how the concoctions taste: COMPLETE.  You can see the post about this HERE. 

​

List of Resources can be found HERE

​Disclaimer: I am an amateur at woodscraft and herblore.  Nothing below should be taken as advice or recommendations.  I am merely experimenting.  Please do your own research before consuming or using any plant for medicinal purposes.
 
The plague, and working from home, has given me a unique opportunity to watch the land around me change from year to year.  Several years ago, the invasive Japanese Stiltgrass was the dominant ground cover here, especially near my garden.  Last year, it was Cleavers (which I will talk more about soon).  This year, it is Chickweed.  There is a thick carpet of it everywhere on the top of this hill and I do not ever recall seeing it in this location before.

Research tells me that this will die off as soon as summer rolls in, but I pulled most of it from around the garden now, and will be pulling more for some experiments over the next few days.
 
The name comes from the fact that apparently chickens love to eat this plant, and the Old English form of the name is ‘cicene mete’ (chicken meat).  The plant is found in association with archaeological digs from the Saxon period in England (McKerracher, Anglo-Saxon Crops and Weeds, 2019).  I will note that the internet states that it initially flourished in Eurasia and naturalized elsewhere over time, but I am not going that deep into the ultimate origins for these things.  There is evidence of the plant from the Coppergate site at York. (Leechcraft, 107) I am looking mainly to see if they would be period for my Forester persona (14th Century England), and clearly it is.

​As I mentioned in my last post, I am very diligent about safety with plants that I am only working with for the first time.  Several sources recommended that you can identify by the flowers (five petals split so deeply that it looks like 10), a broken stem does NOT have milky sap and looking for a line of fine hairs running up the stem on one side (and it shifts position between sets of leaves).  This plant matched numerous photos in books and online and all of the criteria above.

So Chickweed is edible (not recommended for pregnant women) both raw or cooked and supposedly is rather nutritious (and high in iron).  Tonight I incorporated it into my salad, and also plan to eventually sautee a bit in butter to sample.
 
Another relevant thing that I learned this week is that chiggers (Trombicula alfreddugesi), the menace of the region where I am in the US, apparently have a close relative that lives in England that has the common name Harvest Mite (Neotrombicula autumnalis).  Chigggers eat me alive in the late spring/summer, and I am starting to see the wisdom of hosen and braies for my forestry project.  Yes, it is May 17 and I have my first three bites already.

These bites will be a weeks-long-pain but, they also give me the opportunity to try out a medical application of Chickweed!  Supposedly it can be chewed a few times and placed on an itchy bite to relieve the itch.  This would be exceptionally practical in the field if the pests managed to skirt the well-covering clothing of the 14th century.  Additionally, a poultice can be made with oil and I might attempt a salve later this week if I can track down my beeswax.
 
So, the Chickweed smells and tastes like fresh mown grass.  It is not unpleasant, but I would not want to eat mouthfuls by itself.  A bit in a salad is pleasant and adds a crunch like sprouts do.  I rough chopped some and ground with a mortar and pestle and it produces a very stringy mass and a rich green liquid.  In the future, I would more finely chop this up (or use a food processor but I am pretty sure that is not period, lol).  I pressed some onto the first bite and it was very cooling and by the time it fell off a minute or so later, the itch had subsided.  Now to see how long the effect lasts.  (ETA, it lasts about 40 minutes.  I only get an hour of relief from Benedryl gel, so that is not bad!)

​I added a bit of vinegar (apple cider because it was the closest thing at that moment) and ground it a bit longer and added that to the second bite.  It held on a bit longer than the first application and had a similar, and possibly slightly better, effect.  Finally, I chewed a bit of the plant and applied that to the third bite.  It held the best and had a similar effect to the first application.

I also heated some water, soaked the plants for about 5 minutes and then ground them up with the mortar and pestle. This concoction was much more sticky and very easily stayed on the bite for a good 5 minutes.  Adding a bit of olive oil (my choices here for fats are butter, olive oil and canola oil and cats would be licking off the butter so I went with the olive) made it cling even more so.  The initial result was that these also stopped the itching but the results did not seem to last nearly as long as the unheated version.
 
I have some more books on the way and am hoping to better learn if any of these plants are mentioned, along with their period uses, in historic sources.  I read from a very tertiary source that this particular plant was also part of medieval gardens, but do not have enough knowledge in that field to know yet if that is true or not.  An article from 2014 in The Telegraph mentions that the book The Medieval Garden (S. Landsberg) references chickweed being added to the cooking pot.  I have a copy coming so look forward to seeing what all is included in that work.

Persona Summary:

• This plant was likely known to a 14th Century Forester in England
• The understood properties in period might have been something that person had come across
• Plausible food source, potentially used in pottages and the like

Projects:

• Test the plant as a poultice on bites
  • Completed - effective at relieving the itching for 30-40 minutes
• Add the greens to a pottage
• Add greens to a salad
  • ​Completed - tastes like grass but adds nice texture
• Create a salve with chickweed to use on scrapes or bites
  • Completed - Further information HERE

​List of Resources can be found HERE 

We were glamping this weekend so most of my SCA work was funneled into geeky conversations with friends and continuing to finish up the seams on the brown wool tunic.  I need to state here that I really hate running stitch.  I like earlier period where it is appropriate to pretty much avoid it entirely.

But, last week I also mostly finished my chausses that I dyed myself, got the cloth dyed for the hood and cut out the braies!  As I finalize things I will be adding them here.

Today I also continued to uproot more poison ivy and yet more garlic mustard.

​And I made a new friend.  Lol