The plants in your (immediate) environment can support you and your needs, or teach you about your personal disposition and how to fine tune it.
From weeds to trees: dandelions can recognise the need for new beginnings, childlike wonder as well as wishes for something better. It can also encourage you to develop that whimsy if you don’t have it. It also has grit as it can grow in even difficult environments like concrete and with no tending.
Health-wise, a tea made of roots is diuretic and encourage waste elimination. It can reduce swellings as well, has cooling properties, and help you achieve that same mobility, lighter spirit on a physical level as well. The leaves have anti-oxidants and anti-inflammatory properties. Some are used to prevent cancer as well.
Its wild availability makes it accessible as opposed to many supplements. You don’t have to harvest nearby plants, but maybe your health and beauty routine contains some of these plants. Or you can find that something that you can’t put your finger on amongst your local plant allies.
And that logic is true for many other plants: oak, ivy, broadleaf plantain (plantago major), rose, wild lettuce, irises, jimsonweeds, water lilies, pines, thyme, lavender, aloe vera and many more.
You can look for Bach remedies’ description, Pub Med papers (National library of Medicine has tons of open-access PDFs like the Dandelion one), the description of magical or mundane items (conjure oils for Black people, incenses, folk remedies), supplements or tea brands, perfumes or even seasoning blends.
If you crave some cinnamon so you need sweetness, money and riches (it was a precious spice), love or at least healing from heart matters (both physical and emotional)? Did you have a tough breakup and need a pick-me-up?
This wisdom can even be found in things you already use: looking up their history or properties might tell you more and make you use them more conscientiously, and with intentionality. You might not need to get more, and you definitely get more out of what you already have.
Look around the weeds you always walk around, the potted plants on your neigbour’s window or things that grow on the path you walk on everyday.
