Vanilla Plant's Coumarins, Flatwood Pandemic Plant Medicine & Stunning Wildflower

Vanilla plant, Carphephorus odoratissimus spring basal rosettes

Plants give us so much and ask so little in return.  There is really no mystery as to just what plants offer and how they are best used.  One need simply pay attention to the fruit, scent, color and growth habit of the plant then read about or discuss traditional ethnobotanical uses with those knowledgeable of the plant’s identification and history.  There is an abundance of information available today concerning ethnobotanical uses, safety and efficacy of most described plants in our surroundings, including those available through nurseries.  Simply put, good excuses don’t exist for not integrating plants and their benefits into our lives today. 

For example, a common perennial native, Vanilla plant, Carphephorus odoratissmus, is one of those plants we really should get to know, for many reasons.  Unless in bloom, vanilla plant, also known as vanilla-leaf, is one of those herbs we may be aware of on a subconscious level but never pay close attention to except when in bloom. Those brilliant, late summer purple flowers almost always catch our eyes and turn our heads.

Vanilla plant's leaves contain coumarins

I say vanilla plant is one of those plants most of us are aware of on a subconscious level because of personal experience.  Judy and I spend as much of our time as possible out in nature absorbing inspiration, health and enjoyment.  Nature and wildflower immersions are some of my most effective stress relief therapies.   Walking through nature builds stamina too in addition to relaxing my mind.

Preserving stamina is important to me because I know future surgeries will be required to repair additional portions of my still torn aorta.  When out on a nature walk, whether it’s a premonition or maybe my sense of smell is working extra-well, I will usually know when and where a colony of vanilla plant is growing long before coming into view of the leafy plants.

Vanilla plant is about ready to bloom in this August photo

That’s because vanilla plant leaves contain coumarins, substances that drift across breezes and evoke thoughts of freshly mowed lawns and a touch of sweet spice.  Yes, I always know the vanilla plant is growing along the trail long before I ever see its foliage. The plant’s sweet spice fragrance usually surprises me in the most unexpected of natural areas, those where the dirt is sandy and nutrients under the pine canopy are limited.

On my hikes I’ve come over time to know where the trail side vanilla plants grow; in the dunes, between clumps of saw palmetto and up through fallen flatwood pine needles.  Sometimes my thoughts are elsewhere and I’m not expecting the aromatic, breeze laden spice emitted by the plant but mostly now I look forward to waves of fragrant pleasure around the bend where vanilla plant grows.   It's not just me either; for many people unknowingly acknowledge vanilla plant’s presence with surprised and whispered words such as, ‘the air smells so fresh out here today’.

Vanilla plant about to bloom

Once one becomes familiar with vanilla plant’s foliage (it is easy enough to identify the plant)  the enjoyment begins to take on even more intensity as we begin to look for the herb so as to crush the alternate stem clasping leaves and release novel breezes of spicy freshness.  Some say the odor is strongest when the leaves are dry, yet to my sense of smell even the green leaves emit powerful notes of freshness.  Written and oral history both have documented many ethnobotanical uses of the vanilla plant.  Dried leaves have been used to make teas and on a much more economically significant scale, vanilla plant has been harvested by the ton to blend with tobacco as a spicy flavoring.  

Vanilla plant’s sweet scents also offer clues to the herb’s medicinal importance. The plant's fresh aroma is attributed to it's hefty coumarin content.  Synthesized in the plant from sunshine, water, CO2 and dirt, coumarins possess anticoagulation properties in mammals and the aromatic substance may prevent vitamin K factors from completing blood clotting.  Plants such as sweet clover, cherries, tonga beans (the bean used to make Mexican vanilla), and others contain coumarins too.

The potential for bleeding from larger amounts of coumarin ingestion has led to FDA warning statements being associated with its culinary use.  Vanilla plant’s coumarin content makes this plant’s use for human consumption potentially problematic from a governmental regulatory perspective.  But if there were ever a societal breakdown t where pharmaceuticals were off the market then the respective governmental regulatory perspective would be meaningless.

Fermented sweet clover, Melilotus spp. is another plant rich in coumarins and the actual basis for the invention of the anti-coagulant pharmaceutical, warfarin.  Cattle dying from blood loss in Wisconsin were discovered to have been eating fermented sweet clover. Ultimately, warfarin, an important anticoagulant medicine was developed from the fermented clover coumarins.   Sweet clover, Milelotus spp., however is classified in a different genus than the common red clover, Trifolium spp. Yet red clover too contains coumarins and has been the documented cause of bleeding issues in humans.  Most importantly here is the fact that nature does provide us with coumarins, the basis for modern day anticoagulants, from a variety of different plant species, including vanilla plant, Carphephorus odoratissimus.

Today most anticoagulants are synthetically created in laboratories around the world.  Yet plant phytochemicals can also offer an alternative approach if necessary.  Unfortunately plant extracts are also difficult to standardize for concentration and may lead to harmful dose administrations.  Personally, I believe we humans taking pharmaceutical medicines should understand the basic chemistry behind the drugs we ingest, including the ethnobotanical history of the plants from which the drugs were first isolated.  Part of that understanding involves the realization, like the recent losartan recall and trade embargos, manufactured drugs may not always be available.

Many people depend on anticoagulants to treat stroke, arrhythmias and to maintain and care for manufactured heart valves.  A sudden stoppage of warfarin availability could be catastrophic from a health perspective for a large population segment.  Of course the chances of a class of widely used pharmaceuticals becoming unavailable are relatively small.  Yet with the uncertainty we’ve seen emerge from the Covid 19 pandemic and the aforementioned drug recalls, there does exist a very real level of stress associated with the worry of ‘what will I do if my warfarin is no longer available’.

I probably will never turn to vanilla plant for answers to an anticoagulant shortage.  More than likely warfarin will always be available to pick up from the local pharmacy.  But for me, a ‘type A’ individual who always is analyzing risk management issues, simply encountering the fresh scent of vanilla plant coumarins on my nature walks, affords me hope that if I was faced with a lack of anticoagulants for my artificial heart valve, vanilla plant may be a hope in time of crises.  Nature always offers answers to most questions.

Vanilla plant’s scent and coumarin content are usually the strongest in late summer, when blooming occurs and as leaves begin to dry on the stem.  Swaths of bright purple blooms cover the plant with resplendent royal hues typically found on late summer flowering plants.  The color purple is often associated with summer time flowering. In addition to vanilla plant, plants that bloom summer purple include; the closely related deer tongue, blazing star, purple coneflower, clematis, passionflower, ageratum, verbena, chaffweeds, spotted beebalm, thistles and salvias.

Purple blooms are also interwoven into the schedule of shortening days and lengthening twilight.  As the summer daylight hours begin to diminish in length, purple wildflowers seem to proliferate across the landscapes.  Moreover, purple wildflowers find a place in mythology with unicorns, fairies and various traditional priests, gods and priestesses expressing royal themes cloaked in purple.  Of course the supple, rich hues and textures of vanilla plant’s blossoms call out to be an eye-catching part of any floral arrangement. I have picked my share of Carphephorus flowers over the years, even if just to hang on our SUV’s sun visor for a short time.

There are also many good reasons for leaving vanilla plant’s flowers in the flatwoods.  Butterflies, moths, bees and other pollinators are attracted to vanilla plant in search of nectar.  Though the species is lovely and I may be tempted to plant around the home garden (and I may yet), Carphephorus grows best in a fire impacted ecology.  Botanical studies have shown how vanilla plant, along with other Carphephorus species, actually flower longer when growing in wildfire impacted habitat.

Vanilla plant is just one of the many important native wildflowers and plants found in most of our local forests and conservation areas.  Because of the plant’s strong coumarin leaf fragrance and striking wildflower beauty, vanilla plant is easy to recognize.  I am grateful for the coumarins in this plant, its functional beauty and special place in our surrounding ecology.

I may never have to turn to vanilla plant to extract coumarins for anticoagulant use, however just knowing I could if I had too makes me appreciate this marvelous scented and beautiful flowering species even more.  Hope is always nearby in the flatwoods.

Learning About Plants and Permaculture Through Poetry

Florida Permaculture Garden, Okra, Summer and Haiku

Learning of permaculture can come through many formats. Short verse - haiku & senryu have been a boon to me for seeing yoyo survival garden through different lenses. Here is a Friday okra short verse.

...

lesson in patience

waiting for sweat dripping heat

garden’s all okra’s

Okra Coffee. Café Quimbombo.

Florida Permaculture Okra Seeds, ready to roast and grind for a great brew

I traded for a fat bag of okra seeds last week.  A foot rub for a bag of cleaned grey-brown kernels.

As we've mentioned here before, okra is a member of the hibiscus family.  The flowers, leaves, buds and seeds of hibiscus family plants are used in a variety of worldwide cuisines.  

Okra, like many of the other mallows, has a long-standing relationship with humans.  I've read where okra seeds have often been roasted, ground and used to make a coffee substitute throughout history.  For example, during the civil war coffee was often a scarce commodity.  The tradition of roasted okra seed brew had been passed down through the generations of plantation workers and with okra being a convenient crop, the plant was turned to when coffee beans were unavailable.

The strong brew is really tasty and I believe the aroma of roasting okra seeds is sweet, much like the scent of heated coffee beans.

Florida Permaculture, hot, rich cup of okra coffee

Our seeds had been harvested from longer sun dried pods, much too tough to eat.  Once the seeds were cleaned Judy stored them in a freezer bag and there they set until I traded for them.

Florida Permaculture, roasted okra seeds ready for grinding

Best roasting temperature I've found is about 375 F.  I spread the seeds across a sheet of parchment paper on a cookie tray and place in our convection oven.

The seeds are roasted and ready about five minutes after you begin to smell the aromatic, coffee like scent coming from the stove.

Remove the seeds from the oven and allow them to cool.  I process the seeds in a coffee grinder on an espresso type setting and store in an air tight glass jar in the refrigerator.

Florida Permaculture, roasted and ground, ready to make okra coffee

Use about the same amount of ground okra seeds as you would coffee.  You can use a drip pot, boil in a pan or use a French press.

Florida Permaculture, pot of okra coffee, smooth as Starbucks

Be sure and save any left over brew as it makes excellent cold tea.

Florida Permaculture, leftover okra coffee makes a delicious tea

The flavor to me is slightly bitter, like coffee and possesses many layers of fruit and wood flavors.

Here in Florida okra coffee is certainly much more sustainable than beans imported from far away countries.  Okra is easy to grow too, and the plant gives much more than just the seeds.

Okra coffee does not contain caffeine but a simple hack would be to add a bit of dried yaupon holly leaves to your okra java; that'd get your engine revved.  And tastes delicious too.

Florida Permaculture Design, Reading and Understanding Garden Edges

Florida Permaculture, Edges Are Everywhere

The task of trying to read edges edges has always been a significant part of my professional life.  Before aortic dissection put me on hold, I spent decades as a biologist tasked with documenting natural edges across the landscape for design purposes.  Subsequently, after law school, I continued learning the language of edges and natural perimeters as an advocate for sustainable conservation and land use. I have spent thousands of hours out in nature examining tracts of land searching for significant preservation edges, such as; mature successional or native forests; wetlands and uplands; perimeters of protected wildlife habitat; changes in soil types, and so much more.  The years of hands on natural feature delineation have proven important to my own understanding of how perimeters play such an important role in urban landscape and survival garden design.

And so I believe that prior to installing a survival garden the initial permaculture design process should include identification and integration of existing perimeters and edges, both natural ones and those constructed.  Perimeter and edge concepts are necessary central components to successful survival garden design.

Thoughtful edge use is a primary infrastructure design tool capable of maximizing survival garden production values. 

Flat or farm, the concept of edges applies just as much to the tiny apartment balcony as it does to a large acre homestead.  There are many edges on a balcony, those obvious and those not so obvious.

Edges exist almost everywhere.  Some edges are pronounced and other edges are more nuanced and difficult to discern, but all edges are important considerations in permaculture and survival garden design.

During your initial permaculture site survey you will come across those prominent and then those not so manifest edge lines and perimeters.

Obvious edges can include: ground level topography; vertical edges such as buildings, walls, cliffs or dunes; watercourses like ditches, streams, creeks, rivers, lakes and oceans; foot paths, trails, curbs, sidewalks, driveways, roads and highways; balcony railings, fencing and signage; roof contours; rows of plants such as containerized plants, mondo grass, crepe myrtle shrubs and lines of canopy trees; telephone poles and street lighting and more.

Not so obvious edges may include: tree canopy variations; rainwater flows including drip lines, gutter downspouts and water stains, swales; changes in soil types; plant community transitions; shadows from adjacent structures; allelopathic buffering; shadows and light lines; reflections; animal and critter trails; bird flight patterns; prevailing wind directions and others.

In fact upon a comprehensive examination of your survival garden, you will probably find edges and perimeters covering your entire site.  Complexity is the appropriate way to think of your integrated plot, be it balcony, yard or farm. Survival garden complexity and lots of edges go hand in hand.  An understanding of these edges will provide you with design guidance and ultimately with a secure, beautiful, sustainable and productive homestead.

Most edges and perimeters have signatures left by bio and geophysical interactions with the space in and around your homestead.  Birds may share the same flight pattern across your yard or land in the same spot on a apartment balcony rail.  Rainwater pours off, pools and then runs off with similar flow characteristics with each passing storm.  Squirrels, mice, raccoons and feral cats usually enter your parcel time again through the same ingress point and leave via the same egress location.  Tree lines vary with height, texture and color depending on grove species and light exposure, as do shrub and groundcover splays.  Natural windrows become illustrated through the habit and forms of sculpted plant canopies.  Nature and civilization both sign their perpetual works of art across balconies, patios, yards and homesteads with 'edge art'.

Larger tracts of land will usually contain more edges and perimeters than apartment balconies but even small balconies may develop numerous edge influences.  Learning to recognize these natural and man-made edges can be an enjoyable and enlightening venture.  With each additional recognition of newly discovered edges we can gain a greater understanding of how our homestead and garden efforts function in the natural world.

Once we recognize the edges that exist in our space we can then use proven permaculture approaches to increase overall homestead efficiencies.  For instance, if the cardinal lands on your apartment rail in the same place each time she visits, placing a pollinator attracting flower under her perch area can take advantage of her nitrogen rich droppings and spare you the effort of cleaning her plop off your balcony.  Similarly, recognizing stormwater flow across your patio or yard will give you a heads up about where to place those plants needing increased irrigation, and so forth and so on.  

I believe our agrarian and foraging ancestors intuitively developed a refined art of recognizing edges.  Perhaps through industrial commercialization and the electronic revolution we humans today have shifted focus away from our predecessor's edge tracking skills.  Nature has so much to offer once we learn to read her ways.

Finally, the decades of conducting ecosystem field analyses has provided me with many opportunities to learn first hand about patterns with edges in nature.  I want to share an interesting observation about the area where soil saturation ends and upland soils begin.  

Documenting agricultural tracts with large numbers of cows I noticed over the years a similarity between cow paths and wetland delineation lines.  After long discussions with farmers and others familiar with cows and their habits the correlation became clear.  Cows like to have access to water.  They often establish perimeter paths around ponds with varying access points.  When I would establish wetland delineation lines around the ponds, the wetland lines invariably corresponded almost exactly to the cow trails.  Turns out, according to the farmers, cows want to walk as close to water without walking through damp soils or muck.  Upland soils are easier to traverse for the heavy animals.  Now when I look from a distance across a cow field and see ponds I can almost immediately discern where the upland soils change into wetland soils.  The cows intuitively recognized the edges between upland soils and wetland soils and used this recognition to their advantage.

Although wetland and upland soil lines are just one part of integrated soil science a general understanding of edge forensics provides important insights for survival garden design.   It is so much more perceptive to look at plants, topography and animal tracks in the field than to have to pull out a soils map and translate the symbols.

We have just barely touched the surface of the practical importance associated with recognizing nature's edges.  Understanding what your plot is saying will help guide you in your survival garden ventures.

Always look for new edges, wherever you may be.  Even after years long familiarity with a plot you will find that nature changes previous perimeters into new edges.  Seek and search for changing edges.  A homesteader or bushmaster who is well read with the language of nature's edges has an advantage in creating a successful survival garden design over those who have not learned perimeter discernment.

You can start today conversing with edges simply by walking outside, wetting your finger, holding it up in the air and noticing the wind's direction and watch as leaves rustle in a breeze.

Once we begin discerning the language of edges around us, new and amazing permaculture worlds will manifest themselves  everywhere.

Survival Garden Breakfast; Nutritious, Delicious & From The Pantry

Survival garden (yoyo) plantain pantry oatmeal

Most all understand the importance of having a reasonable amount of food set aside, in store for the unexpected.  We have our pantry relatively well stocked, though as we've been staying home and using up the food, so it should be refilled soon.

For me the biggest challenge in integrating pantry food into our daily diet is tastefulness and variety.

This morning's plantain oatmeal breakfast was one of the best we've made in a long time, and quite easy to put together from mostly staple items.

In fact, Judy commented that the dish was the best oatmeal she's had.

Easy to make.  Slice up two small and very ripe (blackened peels) plantain and place in a pot with two cups water, bring to a boil then turn down heat.

Add 3/4 cup organic oats, 2 tablespoons, cinnamon, the juice of one lemon or lime, and a handful of raisins.

Simmer for three minutes.  Place in a bowl with a touch of ghee and enjoy!

Stored pantry goods can be delicious!