Today we took some plants from the botanic garden that were either better suited to the wetter enironement of the field or that we had too many of to the be planted on the field at Romain's. Everyone was busy, planting comfrey by the river or tarragon in the herb patch or Lemon balm under the trees. We planted a long line of peas, collected some fresh wild herbs for a warming tea, blackberry leaves, ground ivy, wild primroses, nettles... Hisham, a third year herbalist student had arrived laden with branches of freshly cut bay. We decided to distil them in Romain's still, the 20 litre still isn't big enough for producing essential oils but is quite adequate for hydrosols. Bay(Laurus nobilis)hydrosol helps create a balance between thoughts and emotions (sounds good to me), it is also a powerful painkiller, fungicide and anti-bacterial. I read somewhere that at the same time as burning a bay leaf you should make a wish, so we all did this around the still.....the ancient meanings for Bay were protection, clairvoyance, purification.
The hydrosol that we obtained was very aromatic one could even say it smelt a bit too strong, I have noticed that a month later it has a much more recognisable scent of bay. Something to remember about hydrosols is that they are NOT a weaker version of the corresponding essential oil, yes they do contain a tiny amount of some of the active parts of the oil but they also contain active parts that are not necessarily found in the oil, these are the parts that are hydrophilic ( they like water). This means that hydrosols do not always have the same healing properties as the plant in other forms:herbal tea, essential oil etc.
Aucun commentaire:
Enregistrer un commentaire