Hydrosols

Sustainably Wild-Crafted and Tested For Chemical Contaminants - 2

An increasingly common situation, where dramatic harvesting practice may take place, is in areas of development or logging. It is very important to keep an eye on these locales and develop a relationship with the landowners and/or the workers. These situations may provide unusually large amounts of harvestable materials (as are generally needed for the production of essential oils). When trees are being cut or land is being cleared, everything from the branches down to undergrowth plants is plowed under, burned or left to fry in the sun.

In such cases tons of bark/or leaf material may be gathered with little additional cost to the already dramatically altered ecology. We don't see this as mercenary but as wise use. The other side of the relationships with "land developers"  is twofold. If developers are outright abusing the land, you are there to call them on it or if necessary blow the whistle. Or you can use a more subtle means of influencing the "development." For example, a landowner told us about an area which had been clear-cut and where he thought blue cohosh grew in abundance. We identified  the plant and potential harvesting area and then talked to him in order to get a picture of the land's history.

Knowing that the cohosh that was inside the cut  line (destined to be lawn) was doomed, we waited till mid-summer , when the plants had borne fruit  and were starting to fade, and then harvested 100 percent of the plant. Where other plants survived in the forest shade, we scratched up some areas and seeded at least five times as much as we had harvested. Generally in a wild area you would harvest only one in five blue cohosh.

The next year the same gentleman phoned us again and asked if we were interested in mullein, which was now growing in the spot where the cohosh had been, healing the overexposed land. We went and harvested half the aerial leaves but left all the plants to flower and seed so that they could become part of the meadow culture which the owner had now been convinced might be more profitable and beautiful than a lawn. 

In many parts of the world wild-crafting is the only way to gather plants. Either land is too expensive, the soil is too poor, or the crop is not valuable enough to make farming an option. In Madagascar, for instance, much of the island is (or was) jungle rain forest, the population predominantly rural, and wealth unevenly distributed. However Madagascar produces many unique plants  and beautiful essential oils and has some very good distillers, so a mix of approaches exists.

In 1998 one company began a special project with cinnamon leaf oil. The main impetus was not the value of the leaf oil, less than one-fourth of the value of the bark oil, but the desire to discourage the killing of the cinnamon tree. Cinnamon bark is valuable in any form, so valuable that it is common practice to uproot the tree and hack out the roots, which look and smell much like the bark and are used as a cheap adulterant of cinnamon bark products. of course, this kills the tree.

Madagascar rain forests are just as fragile as any other, and the widespread destruction of cinnamon trees and all that grew near them allowed severe erosion and other environmental damage to occur. The solution was to give value to something that only a living tree produced... the leaves. Now pickers can be convinced to harvest leaf and bark in a sustainable manner and leave the tree alive for future harvests. Further value has been given to the crop through the sale of Cinnamon leaf hydrosol.

It is this kind of professional integrity that we should look for in the producers of hydrosols and essential oils. Of course many countries have a difficult history that makes environmental concerns regarding wild-crafted plants take on a whole new picture. Who can say what may residue may exist in the soil, water, and plants in war-ravaged or over-industrialized countries?  Can modern testing methods ensure that the plant products from these regions are clean and truly health giving?

Can people even afford the tests? When will the law actually regulate the use of chemicals and pollutants based on a belief that people and the planet, not just profits, must be protected? When will we start to consider the complex interaction of these elements in the products we choose to use for our health? The wings of the butterfly can change the weather: the choices we make today will determine our future.

For millions of years, on average, one species became extinct every century. But most of the extinctions since prehistoric times have occurred in the last three hundred years. And most of the extinctions that have occurred in the last three hundred years have occurred in the last fifty. And most of the extinctions that have occurred in the last fifty years have occurred in the last ten.

It is the sheer rate of acceleration that is as terrifying as anything else. We are now heaving more than a thousand species of animals and plants off the planet every year.

Reference: Hydrosols The Next Aromatherapy / Suzanne Catty