A budding greeting to each of you in these early Spring days,

My attention has been with the trees the past two weeks. Not yet in the season of leaves unfurling,  but we are in the time of the buds swelling on the branch. The red maple buds, exuberant in the sun, look like glittering candies against the clear blue skies. The apple buds have a tinge of bright pink, just a hint of the flowers that are to come. And as always, there is a jar in the apothecary full of cottonwood buds and olive oil that I have been adding to for the past few months when I am lucky to find some wind-fallen branches by the river after a storm. 

 

A few years ago I started researching a medicine making practice called gemmotherapy - which specifically uses only the buds of a plant to make an extract. "Gemma" in latin means precious stone and also bud, and when you begin to collect the buds you do feel the resonance of this part of the plant being equated to a precious stone. To see a lilac with hundreds of buds wrapped up tightly on each branch; you get a glimpse into the future riches of this plant: cascading fragrant flowers perfuming the air. The coming treasure is held secure in each bud. 

 

When the sap rises in the trees in Spring, the buds are brimming with new growth and medicine. We harvest the buds before they have begun to leaf out, just at the beginning of their opening. The buds are the most nutrient dense part of the plant that contain all of the plant's growth material. The developing embryonic tissue of the entire tree is here; there is so much energy, potential and medicine in these buds. If you tasted a bud, you would recognize them as medicine. It is currently Birch month in Herbal Mystery School so I have been spending a lot of time with the black birch that grows around my home. When bite into a bud, I instantly taste the wintergreen volitive oils which speaks to the immune boosting & antioxidant properties of this tree. 

Although harvesting tree buds for medicine is a very old form of folk medicine and practice, using a specifically-made, diluted extract of one tree bud at a time was popularized in the 1950's by Pol Henry and remains an ever-growing and well-loved form of herbal medicine in Europe. You harvest the buds when they are just beginning to open. You don't want the bud to be leafing out, nor do you want it to be closed up tight. This might take a few seasons of close observation to find when this perfect moment for harvest is! I make sure to only pick one bud off of each branch (since this is the next year's growth for the tree), unless I have harvested a bunch of young branches for a bark harvest as well (pictured above with the black birch). As for the actual process of maceration (extracting the plant material into a solvent), I follow the classical method of preparing the gemmotherapy extract which is as follows:

In pre-Christian Poland, there was a holiday called Flowering Sunday or Willow Sunday (now observed as Palm Sunday), which refers to the Slavic custom of bringing in young, budding and just-beginning-to-leaf branches inside. The branches were tied with bright ribbons and hung all over the home. They were said to infuse the home with the blessings of the growing trees; awakening the space, stimulating the rooms, cleansing the house. Synchronistically, this time of year is when the Slavic house spirit who is also the personification of the ancestors, the Domovoj wakes up from their hibernal slumber. The house is now activated, both in spirit and physical form. 

 

There are many Polish spring rituals that involve the young, budding and flowering branch of willows and birches. These trees unfurl first, so of course they carry the animating magic of Spring. There is a tradition of curling the birches, where young women would visit the birch groves in the woods to decorate the budding trees, dance underneath the branches and literally shape the branches into circles, an infinity symbol, calling life forward. The more I spend time with these trees, observing life emerging through these young buds at this time of year; my own resonance with the vital force of the season sharpens.