schisandra chinensis

[Guest guest]

Does anyone on this list have a relationship with Schisandra chinensis?

I've had 2 plants of it sitting on my kitchen window since they came in

the mail last month. The vines are getting long and I'd like to move

them to their permanent home in my back yard.

 

The places I was planning to put them is where I've been trying to start

an elderberry thicket. It gets quite sunny there during the parts of the

day the sun isn't hidden behind the house but even then the bushes would

provide shade and I was hoping to use the elderberry bushes rather than

set up an arbor for their vines.

 

Would this sort of environment be viable?

 

Penel

[Guest guest]

Thank you mantas5 for sharing your research of Schisandra.

 

Under the elderberry bushes might work out for me but I might also want to

consider the north side of the house next to the water spigot.

 

Another question to those on list who practice herbalism.

For a couple years I've been going to an event in Iowa called Herbfest. Many

traditions have been represented at this event. We averaged about 600

herbalists drifting from workshop to workshop in big tents under the noon

day sun.

What struck me most is the relationship most of the presenters and

participants have had with the herbs.

They tended not to be the visit to a health food store for a jar of some

pill type but rather a wander out into the field and engaging the herb in a

conversation first type.

It doesn't matter which tradition these herbalist harkened from, they all

seem to have a personal relationship with the spirits of the herbs they've

aligned with.

 

A couple months ago I took a semester on Japanese Meridian Energetics. The

Acupuncturists in the class whose education up until then was either in the

French or Chinese traditions of acupuncture where constantly remarking how

different what we were studying was from what they had learned in school up

until then.

Since my education (shiatsu) hadn't been in strict TCM or French

acupuncture, as things were told to me in that semester I had nothing to

unlearn. I soaked it up and it all just made sense.

The same with the people of Herbfest. I have no real experience with large

groups of herbalists to know otherwise.

 

Do you think the 600 people of herb fest are not the norm of herbalists,

that the average herbalist is spiritually removed from the herb and views it

as a mere product to be used as a tool rather than as a guide or at least an

ally?

 

Penel

who noticed this afternoon that sweet woodruff is in bloom