Invasive Plants as Medicine for People & Planet

Join Clinical Herbalist Tamara Segal in this 2-part series on Invasive Plants as Medicine for People and Planet.

In class one, Tamara will give us an overview of the ways that invasives tend to come into disturbed spaces and dominate, and how they often seem to play an important role in restoring various aspects of ecosystems over time.  She will look at examples of invasives providing food and/or shelter for wildlife and pollinators, how they cleanse and detoxify soil, water and air, prevent erosion, bring nourishment to depleted soil, how they might protect flora from disease, and how they are sources of food and medicine for people.  

In the second class, Tamara will focus on three invasive plants, looking more specifically at the medicine they provide to humans and their use in clinical practice; Japanese knotweed (Polygonum cuspidatum), Bindweed (Convolvulus arvensis) and Purple loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria).

Tamara Segal is a clinical herbalist and teacher of herbal medicine. She runs her practice at a farm, beside a forest near the shores of beautiful Lake Ontario on an island known as Prince Edward County.  It’s in the traditional territory of the Huron-Wendat, Haudenasuanee and Mohawk peoples, where the elms and Eastern red cedars flourish.  Tamara hand-harvests and prepares most of the medicines she works with in her practice, and has a special appreciation for working with wild plants as both food and medicine.  In addition to offering private consultation, Tamara teaches an Experiential Herbalism program at her farm, gives plant identification walks and offers land use consultation support for those looking to let wild spaces thrive on the land they tend.  Sharing ideas about the earth’s inherent intelligence and how we can learn from the plants is one of Tamara’s key passions, and she is ever grateful to be doing this work.