Sitka Valerian

This weeks plant was Sitka Valerian (Valeriana sitchensis).  I took this picture while gathering. However unglamorous it appears, this is how the plant looks at harvest time.  

We also looked at V. officionalis, V. dioica, and V. capitata.  As a genus, Valerian is a cosmopolitan plant growing in many different habitats around the northern hemisphere.

Sitka Valerian is a plant of high mountain meadows at or below tree line.  It prefers moist meadows and clearings between Mountain Hemlock and Subalpine Fir, sometimes found growing well away from trees in the open alpine regions like Paradise Park.

I collected this batch from the timberline trail of Mt. Hood.  This time of year, after the first frost, you can smell the tell tale odor of Sitka Valerian wafting on the breeze for about twenty yards before the patches of the plant are encountered. Often, it's the smell more than anything else that helps you to find the plant.

Sitka Valerian has upright stems tow or so feet tall with one or two sets of opposite leaves along the stem, each group well separated from the next.  During the flowering times, the stem is crowned by white to pale pink umbel flower heads that look similar to mustard and carrot family flowers.

When flowering is complete, the stem deteriorates, leaving the basal leaves to photosynthesis for the remainder of the season.

The roots of Sitka Valerian are hardy, almost woody, yet succulent and smelly too.  The plant sets a main rhizome which branches off into many translucent rootlets.  It grows in clusters and is often found in the company of lupine, green corn lilly, bistort, and other lovers of the high mountain meadows.

Let's take a moment to consider the yearly round of Sitka Valerian, who is often found growing at 6000 feet on the west side of the Cascade Mountains.  By late march there is often 15 or more feet of snow on top of the ground where the plant grows.  The loamy soil that hosts the roots is frozen, often to the depth of two to three feet below the surface.  In late May, when the valley's are feeling the sun and people are sporting tank tops, the snow begins to melt.  The meltdown is not usually complete until mid June, at which point the alpine meadows are soggy with the remains of the previous winter.  The soil up there does not hold water very well, so the roots must use this time to wake up from the winter's frost and drink deep of the most water abundant time of year.  By July the heat is on.  The sun's UV rays are stronger in the alpine than they are in the valleys.  The soil begins to dry up and all of Valerians energy goes into flowering.  By August, it is hot and dusty in the alpine.  Rain is scarce and if it comes, it usually drains away within hours.  First frost usually comes by the end of september and come October, the snow begins to fall again.

Sitka Valerian is a tough plant.  It is for this reason that I prefer to harvest it over all the other Valerians. I believe that a little of that mountain hardiness transfers over to the plant, and that the medicine of Sitka Valerian is stronger than out garden variety of V. officionalis.

All of the Valerians are a sedative and an antispasmodic.  In my humble opinion V. sitchensis the most potent.  The medicine of Valerian puts you to sleep.  If you have ever had a night with the wheels of your mind spinning round and round as you lay awake in bed thinking about everything from your mother's health to tomorrows responsibility, to your car and whether or not you locked the passenger side door, to a thousand other things that move jingle around your brain like change in your pocket.  It is for nights like this that Valerian is very useful.

I have also had good success putting children down to sleep with Valerian, especially little children who refuse to go to bed because it's that time of life in which they test their parents at every corner as a child's will is developed.  A word of warning, the taste is really hard to conceal.  My kids soon caught on to the tell tale taste of the medicine, even when I hid it in honey and I was only able to pull this trick on them a few times.  It was, however, very effective every time and I owe my success at "the bedtime wars" to Valerian.

If you are an adult, Valerian will calm you down enough to go to sleep.  During times of my life that the wheels of mind would not slow down, I have found this plant to be a great ally. Insomnia can really suck the life out of a person.  Valerian will help put an end to it.

But Valerian can become a little habit forming.  So, if you find yourself returning to it's medicine again and again, perhaps you should meditate and get to the root of your monkey mind problem.  What's really on your mind and what can you do about it? You may need to develop a meditation practice to calm your mind from the inside out.

This weeks class was really chill.  It was just me, Jon, and Erik.  I am very sensitive to the medicine of Valerian.  The process of gathering it puts me in a very dreamy state.  Then being in the Medicine club room, picking apart the roots, drawing the plant, and inhaling that funky smell, all gave me a buzz that is unlike any other.

The three of us drew the plant and made out spirit images of the plant.  We talked about Valerian and dream time as well.

Valerian has always had a profound affect on my dreams.  I have found them to be more vivid, lucid, and strange when I take the medicine.  This is not true for everyone.  Some people report very unsettling, bizarre, and disturbing dreams after taking Valerian.

There are certain metabolisms that will not fit well with Valerian.  It can be a stimulant to some and can also make for a rough awakening the next morning complete with grogginess and an unwillingness to face the day. 

Back to the medicine at hand...we cleaned the roots and removed a half-pint jar of mountain soil that is now on display at the Medicine Club room.  The clean roots were broken by hand and put into a half pint jar and a tincture was made using brandy.

Jon, Eric and myself finished off the class with a discussion of the search for Soma.  I related my unsuccessful attempts at a northwest blend of plants that involved Sitka Valerian.  I have found that the medicine of this plant to be so potent that its effects over-ride the medicines of the other plants such as Bleeding Heart and Morning Glory.  The Medicine Club will be investigating this and other phenomena of plant alchemy during the late fall and winter.

Thank you all,

see you next week.