Wild Eyed #01
Dream-talking with lichens
2002
Fifteen years ago I had an odd dream. In it, a medicinal plant that I was interested in, an
Usnea lichen that is ubiquitous on trees throughout the world, told me that
while it was good for healing human lungs it was primarily a medicine for the lungs of the
planet, the trees.
I awoke. I was amazed. It had never occurred to me in quite that way that plants have
some life and purpose outside their use to human beings. But, of course, when I thought
it over, I realized that the human species has only been around for about a million years.
A lichen, that has been intimately connected to tree species for at least 150 million years,
must have been doing something all that time besides pining away for our emergence.
Credits:
The Lost Language of Plants: The Ecological Importance of Plant Medicines to Life on Earthpage ix
Chelsea Green Publishing, 2002 (325 pages)
Correspondence:
The Recall of the Wildmother_nature@the-recall-of-the-wild.org
The Recall of the Wild
