Chicory
More and more I am looking at the different plants around me asking: what particular function are they serving? I don’t mean generally, like providing Oxygen. I mean like why is there a ring of poison ivy around most public wooded areas? Seems to me the forest is saying “humans, stay out.” I was recently looking for pre-historic stone structures in Massachusetts, and was hunting down one that had no clear address, no labeled path, only directions like, “east of the main ridge, up local hillsides …” The deeper I went the more dense became the Stinging Nettle.
I don’t know if you have ever experienced the delights of Stinging Nettle. Thousands of very soft, very tiny hairs on the stem. Lightly brushing them across your skin will give you an electro-chemical shock of surprising intensity. Decent clothing protects you, but only to a point. I walked on further. The forest started getting that expansive deep connected-ness, at least that’s how I perceive it. You start to feel the forest as a single entity, with an intelligence not at all human; and it has an opinion about you being there. I stopped and said my hellos, and thanked the forest for being there and might I please come and go in peace. Ten more minutes on and I lose the trail. The stinging nettles were thickening. I found myself a bit frantic. So I stopped, became quiet, relaxed. Then my eyes saw two stones stacked on top of each other over to the right about 20 yards up the hill— humans had gone that way before. Another 15 minutes, slope increasing, more Nettle, I lose the trail again, it’s hot and humid, my skin is vibrating here and there with Nettle juice breaking through, I am sliding more often downhill on wet stones. I stop. Relax. Become quiet. Way up the hill to the left I see several stones stacked on top of each other— someone had gone that way. Another 10 minutes and I lose the thread of the tail. It sure feels like there is something up that hill. But the Nettle is now blanketing the landscape as far as I can see. My thin summer clothing is no longer providing real protection. The message seems loud and clear: stay away human. I turn back to regroup with my hiking mate.
Back to Chicory. I wanted to add some to my garden. I want to make tea of its roots and leaves. But where to find it? I turn my walking abouts into looking for chicory. Not finding any, I do a little reading. The botanical writings say it is found where soil is poor. Next week I’m walking to the farmer’s market in the neighbor town. This town is NOT known for its open green spaces. Turning a corner, there is a little patch of dirt sandwiched between a parking lot and a road, and a profusion of Chicory, see below.
I would not call this “poor” soil, I would call this a shit show. No one waters this. It is surrounded by asphalt. And the Chicory is beyond happy. Thriving. DOING ITS JOB!
Then it all clicked into focus, and I decided to write this essay. Plants have jobs. They are “sent” or “placed” in various locations to serve a function. This of course flies in the face of Classic Darwinism, which says that in the random throw of the dice, no other plant can survive there, and Chicory has found its niche. Now, for me, in this clarity on the way to the farmers market, I see that this is like saying that in the random throw of the dice only skin cells can survive at the boundary of your body, so that’s why you find skin cells at the boundary of your. We know this is absurd.
Our senses usually only show us plan and purpose of creatures that are our size or smaller. We can look at a liver cell and see its function in the larger organism. But when it comes to knowing the plan or purpose of entities larger than us, our, what I might call “senses operating at their lowest level” see no plan or purpose to all these separate plants and animals, all these separate planets and suns, all these separate galaxies. Does Organic Life on the surface of the Earth has its own coherent intelligence? Does it have agency? Can it have goals and work towards those goals? For me now, being momentarily lifted up, my senses are seeing that Chicory is thriving on these impossible soils because that is its job. It is happy. It’s doing its job. Chicory goes in to where the soil is so broken and cut off, and it rehabilitates that soil, making beautiful light blue flowers on the way, ‘cause that just how She rolls. Our five senses work differently when we are lifted up. Same eyes, just seeing more.
I recognised those little flowers immediately and had no idea what they were… beautiful. They used chicory in the 70’s as a substitute or mixed with real coffee, well they did here in the U.K., at least. I will see those little gems when I’m along that pathway next time. Nice read TY 💚🐝🐝🍀🕊️🌱
One of my fav. flowers.
Herbal rumination leads to full-blown alchemic and metaphysic understanding. A single blade of the weedy 'kusa grass' was an historic metaphor for the distance between Polaris and Earth.