What is Science?

Science: “The observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of natural phenomena.” American Heritage Dictionary.

Scientific Method: “The totality of principles and processes regarded as characteristic of or necessary for scientific investigation, generally taken to include rules for concept formation, conduct of observations and experiments, and validation of hypotheses by observations or experiments.” American Heritage Dictionary. 

Understanding Science:

• It may evoke an image of someone in a white coat peering through a microscope, a zoologist observing animals in the Galapagos, unintelligible equations scribbled on a chalkboard, beakers of bubbling liquid, or a big fat text book.
• Science is a body of knowledge and a process.
• Science is the process of discovery.
• Science is a way of understanding the natural world in the past, present and future.
• Science is ongoing—refining and expanding our knowledge of the universe.
• Science is a way to study the natural world
  Science focuses on the natural world.
  Science aims to explain the natural world.
  Science explores testable ideas that are reproducible.
  Science (in theory) relies on evidence.
  Scientific knowledge leads to ongoing research.

Science has limits:  Moral judgments, aesthetic judgments, decisions about applications of science, and conclusions about the supernatural are outside the realm of science.

Concepts from: “Understanding Science 101” (see the last link to website in resource list at end).

Misconceptions about Herbs and Science:

Misconception: Science contradicts the existence of God. Correction: Science cannot support or contradict the existence of supernatural entities. It deals only with natural phenomena and explanations.

Misconception: Science seeks interest in herbs only to find an isolated chemical that can  later be synthesized then patented as a new drug. Correction: Natural product chemists are interested in identifying as many plant constituents as possible, particularly to discover new compounds using increasingly sophisticated technologies. Why? Because the natural world produces more chemistry than “a million medicinal chemists working for a million years” could dream-up.

Misconception: A conspiracy between the medical community, pharmaceutical companies, and FDA exists discouraging the use of herbs. Correction: “There is little doubt that consumer demand will promote an every-increasing interest in classic plant drugs for use as traditional herbal remedies.” (Varro Tyler, 1996).

Misconception: Herbs cannot harm, only cure. Correction: “The dose makes the poison.” However traditional herbal practices seeks to primarily use herbs that can be safely prepared and used by an individual.

Misconception: Science is infallible. Correction: Scientific knowledge is subject to the vagaries, interpretations, and limitations of fallible biological entities commonly known as human beings.

Get inspired: Explore the big picture and small details:

American Botanical Council. www.herbalgram.org. Various databases and information resources on all aspects of the science behind useful plants.

Steven Foster’s website: www.stevenfoster.com. Steven Foster’s HerbalBlog www.stevenfoster.com/herbalblog.

Hubble Space Telescope Site. http://hubblesite.org.

Morris, William, Ed. 1978. The American Heritage Dictionary. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co. [5^th edition, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 2011 is available at: http://www.ahdictionary.com ].

Plant List. www.plantlist.org. The combined, searchable, taxonomic databases of the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew, Missouri Botanical Garden,  New York Botanical Garden, International Organization for Plant Information, International Plant Name Index and other institutions and organizations.

PubMed.  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed. PubMed is an online database to over 22 million citations from the biomedical literature and life sciences journals, often including links to full-text content from publisher websites. Studies funded by the U.S. government now have full, pre-publication manuscripts on-line. PubMed is a free database of the National Library of Medicine at the National Institutes of Health, the worlds’ largest medical library.

Tyler, Varro E. 1999. False Tenets of Paraherblism. Available at Quackwatch.org. http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/paraherbalism.html. Accessed March 30, 2013.

University of California Museum of Paleontology. “Understanding Science 101: How Science Really Works.” Available at: http://undsci.berkeley.edu/article/whatisscience_01. Accessed March 30, 2013.

When:  Friday and Saturday, April 5 and 6, 2013

Where: Ozark Folk Center State Park, Mountain View, Arkansas

On April 5, 2013, from 10 A.M. until 5 P.M.  the annual Herbal Fieldtrip will take place at the Ozark Folk Center State Park in Mountain View, Arkansas. Rosemary Gladstar, Steven Foster, Sasha Daucus, Susan Belsinger, Committee of 100 Herb Garden Chairman, Jennifer Blankenship and OFC herbalists, Kathleen Connole and Tina Marie Wilcox will teach on the hike. Participants will divide into small groups and rotate through several different hikes in order to experience the expertise of each teacher.  Light rain or shine, bring a sack lunch, water, walking stick, and weather-appropriate apparel. This year the hikes will be excursions in the Heritage Herb Garden and explorations of trails on Ozark Folk Center State Park land.

On April 6, 2013, from 9 AM through 5:30 PM, experience Rosemary Gladstar’s Herbs for Family Health, hosted by the Committee of 100 for the Ozark Folk Center. Hear Steven Foster’s Enjoying the Spirit of Herbal Science. See Susan Belsinger’s Favorite Homegrown & Homemade Herbal Remedies. Learn about Hawthorn—A Humble Native Shrub for the Heart and Circulation by Tina Marie Wilcox. Pharmacist Jennifer Blankenship will present, Chinks in the Armor and Sasha Daucus will provide a sensory experience entitled Herbal Imagination. An herbal lunch is included on Saturday.  The fieldtrip and workshop fees are as follows: Before March 28, $90; After March 28, $100. Field Trip only: Before March 28, $35; After March 28, $45. Workshop only: Before March 28, $65, After March 28, $75. The full schedule and fees may be found at www.ozarkfolkcenter.com on the herb event page or call 870-269-3851 for more information. Call 800-264-3655 for lodging reservations and inquire about the special herb weekend rate.

Cost for Herbal Field Trip and Medicinal Herb Workshop combination:

Before March 28, $90                               After March 28, $100

Field Trip only:

Before March 28, $35                              After March 28, $45

Workshop only:

Before March 28, $65                               After March 28, $75

Contact Person: Tina Marie Wilcox  

It may have looked a little like winter recently, but don’t be fooled by a little snow. We are on the verge on spring. If you look toward the treetops you may notice a wispy touch of rust red. Look close at the flowers and they are dark red, fringed with tufts. Our elms are in full bloom now. Three species of elms are common to Carroll County—the relatively small winged elm Ulmus alata, the familiar, and once more common American elm Ulmus americana, and slippery elm Ulmus rubra which mainly grows in bottomlands or near springs. The genus Ulmus includes only 25-30 species found in the Northern Hemisphere. Both American elm and slippery elm have relatively large leaves 4-9 inches long. American elm is mostly smooth on the upper leaf surface, whereas slippery elm is sandpapery above.  They both bloom before the leaves appear, in fact, generally they produce their winged fruit before most trees leaf out.

American elm was once considered one of the best shade and street trees of North America. In the early twentieth century it was decimated by Dutch elm disease, a sac fungus spread by the elm bark beetle. Three species of fungi cause the disease, first identified in Europe in 1910 and exported from the Netherlands on timber bound for North America in 1928. The disease was first described by Dutch plant pathologists in 1921. Although we associated its origins with the Netherlands, the fungi are believed to be from Asia.  Evidence suggests something was wrong with elm trees much earlier; their decline observed near Oxford, England by the 1780s. Even the name of the elm bark beetle Scolytus destructor, a scientific name bestowed on the bug in 1795, hints at the havoc it brought in later centuries. After spreading through the eastern U.S. and Canada, destroying large numbers of elms, by the 1930s research began on identifying tree stock resistant to the disease, and various American elm selections are available that are less susceptible to attack.  Resistant hybrids with European and Asian elm species are also available in the nursery trade.  The graceful beauty of the American elm lives on.

© 2013 Steven Foster

Some  herbalists (but not you young ones) will recall Dr. Paul Lee, from Santa Cruz, California, once the Executive Director of the Herb Trade Association, the predecessor of the American Herbal Products Association. Paul Lee brought Shakespearian actor turned maniacal horticulturist, Alan Chadwick, to UC Santa Cruz in 1967 which evolved into UC Santa Cruz’s then Farm & Garden Project. Chadwick’s blending of biodynamic principles with French-intensive gardening inspired a generation of gardeners. Now Paul Lee has completed a new memoir, “There’s a Garden in the Mind: A Memoir of Alan Chadwick and the Organic Movement in California.” Pre-order print or Kindle edition at Amazon or better yet get it from your favorite independent bookseller. It’s published by North Atlantic Press (Random House, dist.), $19.95 trade paper (240p) ISBN 978-1-58394-559-9

By Steven Foster

Last Sunday I received an email from a pharmacist who was on his way to Ghana in west tropical Africa on a two-month trip with a medical mission to deliver Western healthcare to remote villagers. Since invariably they will primarily be treating malaria and high blood pressure, the problem is once they leave a village, the people who live there can’t afford to continue on Western drug therapy. He asked what local medicinal plants could be used instead. The question is not that simple.

A pharmacological approach is a pharmacological approach whether one is treating a condition with Western drugs or herbs. In a remote African village, the social, cultural and spiritual context of medical treatment may be more important than the drug used to treat disease. A SUV rolling into a village with a NGO logo on the car door equals expectation of money and help, neither of which may be delivered. Maybe they don’t need drugs to treat malaria. Maybe the villagers just need mosquito nets to prevent nighttime mosquito bites. Maybe you give mosquito nets to the women and children, and when the knights-in-shining NGO Land Cruisers leave the village, the dominant males gather up those mosquito nets to sell in a nearby market. Maybe the mosquito nets solve the problem.

There is likely a local pecking order (cultural/spiritual context) in a village where a traditional healer will be responsible for delivery of herbs, and it might be that the villagers don’t have the money, chickens, or other trade goods to acquire the local healer’s service. So if you do find useful medicinal plants to treat disease does delivery of that aid upset the local social balance? The traditional healer is like a Western M.D— high up on the social ladder, and they are not giving up their trade secrets to short-term Western visitors.

In any culture in the world that relies on traditional folk medicine, the people with the real working knowledge of local herbs are the women. For them, that knowledge is nothing special. It is just normal day-to-day knowledge like knowing how to wash dishes. Those are the people to whom one should listen.

© 2013 Steven Foster, 2-14-13

© 2013 Steven Foster

Now that the Superbowl is over, we can look back at one minor controversy—Baltimore Ravens linebacker, Ray Lewis’s alleged use of velvet deer antler spray as a “performance enhancing dietary supplement.” Deer antler spray supposedly delivers insulin growth factor 1 (IGF-1) a hormone used in pure form to treat young people with stunted growth. Since it is delivered intravenously and is not absorbed in the oral mucosa it is likely that a nose spray delivers little more than the cool sensation of placebo fairy dust.

As a medicinal “herb” in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) deer velvet antler, (lu-rong) has been used for over 2000 years. The earliest known reference is a Han Dynasty silk scroll dated to 168 BCE.  It is sourced from the young pilose (hairy) antlers of Cervus nippon, the Japanese or Asian Deer and Cervus elaphus the European Red Deer. In TCM deer velvet antler is used to promote virility, replenish qi and blood, plus strengthen the bones and tendons.  It is prescribed for impotence, infertility, lassitude, dizziness, tinnitus, among other uses, in a dose of 1-2 g.

Deer antler is the only mammalian organ that is self-regenerating on an annual basis. Velvet is the rapid growth phase of deer antler, before it becomes horn-like, hard and calcified. At this stage it is covered with velvet-like hairs, at which time the whole antler is harvested (not just the “velvet”).  Even if the immature antler is removed at the velvet stage it heals over, and finishes its chemical evolution to the bone stage, producing a button, which is shed at the end of the season, just like a full-grown antler. At the velvet stage, the antler grows rapidly, up to an inch a day. The velvet antler is a virtual chemical factory, containing calcium phosphate, calcium carbonate, proteins, collagen, trace amounts of androgens and estrogens, gangliosides and hundreds of other compounds.

A 2012 study published in the New Zealand Journal of Medicine reviewed  seven randomized controlled clinical studies on the use of deer velvet antler supplements and concludes that it may show promise for osteoarthritis, but one clinical trial on sexual function and three clinical trials on sports performance enhancement found no benefits.

Ray Lewis called the rumor he used deer velvet, a banned substance in the NFL, a “trick of the devil.” Under the guise of God, Ray Lewis types can get away with murder.

©2013 Steven Foster

The jonquils are fooled again.  Up they pop with the early week warm-up, only to be beaten back down by cold weather at week’s end. What’s up with the schizophrenic winter weather? Our fluctuating winter weather is due to a very specific atmospheric event called “sudden stratospheric warming”.  We live in the troposphere, a thin layer of atmosphere about 7 miles high, where our weather occurs. Above the troposphere is the stratosphere which stretches about 15-18 miles above the earth’s surface. Usually there is little air exchange between the icy cold stratosphere and the troposphere.

Around the New Year, a massive storm off the coast of Japan and the Kamchatka Peninsula in the north Pacific, stretching 1,400 miles across, and over seven miles high, punched energy up into the stratosphere allowing warmer air to flow upward. The cold thin air in the stratosphere had to go somewhere and it flowed down into the coldest air above the Arctic circle. Picture the coldest polar air like the bubble in a level or an unbroken egg yoke in a frying pan. Above that cold sink of air is the polar vortex, air patterns that spin around that bubble of coldest air. The sudden stratospheric warming event caused a weakening of the stratospheric vortex which wobbled downward to disrupt the polar vortex.  Energy release causes an equal and opposite reaction.

The disrupted broken egg yolk of the polar vortex caused an energy wave that bumped into the polar jet stream. We live between the polar jet stream and the subtropical jet stream both of which generally run west to east (though can be highly variable). Last year we had a very mild winter because the polar jet stream basically sat at the U.S. Canada border and flowed straight west to east. Polar air stayed to the north of it.

Now the polar jet stream, bumped by the wobbling polar vortex creates big waves in the jet stream undulating across the continent. That means for the next month, the weather will be predictable. We will have 3 or 4 days of unseasonably warm weather followed by 3 or 4 days of cold weather.

By the way, this  atmospheric conspiracy is linked to sun spots.

Santa is a Shaman: The Magic of Santa Claus

© 2012 Steven Foster

The December 2012 issue of National Geographic magazine has a fascinating article called “Masters of Ecstasy” by David Stern on mystical priests, practitioners of intervening between the seen and the unseen in matters of money, health, the future, and the past. These are the shamans of various ethnic traditions of Mongolia, Central Asia, and Siberia. The article tells the story of how these ancient traditions are seeing a strong revival following the downfall of atheistic communist regimes that fell like dominos nearly 25 years ago with the breakup of the former Soviet Union. Shamanistic traditions evolved in what is now Siberia and spread throughout the world thousands of years ago. Suppressed by Christian, Islamic and Buddhist religions, then by communist governments, their traditions went underground for centuries. Now shamans openly practice in north and Central Asia. Many work alone while others have organized, like the 10,000-member-strong trade union at the Golomt Center for Shamanic Studies in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia’s capital. The word shaman comes from a Siberian people known as the Evenki. Santa Claus is a shaman.

This is the backdrop, the canvas that begins to paint of the visual depiction of the origins of the personage that has morphed into the modern American concept of  Santa Claus. One of the elements adopted in various Western European countries is celebration of a monk named St. Nicholas, who was born into wealth in Patara, in modern-day Turkey around 280 A.D. St. Nicholas, known for helping the poor and sick, celebrated for his kindness and generosity on his feast day of December 6. He was seen as  a protector of sailors and children. The veneration of St. Nicholas, the most popular saint of Renaissance Europe, survived through Dutch traditions.

Celebrations of the anniversary of St. Nicholas’s death (December 6) came to America with Dutch immigrants to New York, and noted in newspapers in 1773 and 1774. The Dutch nickname for St. Nicholas was “Sinter Klaas”, the source of our name “Santa Claus”. The now familiar images of stockings filled with toys come from engraved woodcuts distributed in New York at the annual meetings of the Dutch Sinter Klaas Society in 1804. The tradition was further cemented in America’s mind in the writings of Washington Irving (1783-1859). Best known for his short stories “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van Winkle, he  also wrote A History of New York, published in 1809 which described the New York Dutch immigrant’s celebrations of “Sinter Klaus.”

Gift giving for children, and the tradition of Christmas shopping were promoted with in newspapers advertisements in the 1820s, and by the 1840s, separate advertisement sections for Christmas shoppers appeared. In 1822, an Episcopal minister, Clement Clarke Moore, wrote a long poem for his three daughters called “An Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas”. Initially the poem was not meant for public consumption, but once published it became the iconic “’Twas the Night Before Christmas.”  It introduced the concept of the “right jolly old elf” with a red suit, lined with white fur, knee-high black boots, rolled down at the top, and the magical ability to descend chimneys and deliver presents on a sleigh led by eight flying reindeer.

Still with me? We don’t know what sources Clement Clarke Moore drew upon to create his fanciful vision of Santa Claus. However, an exhibit currently running at the Lloyd Library and Museum in Cincinnati informs us of possible influences. The exhibit, running from December 3, 2012 to February 28, 2013 is called, “What Makes Reindeer Fly?” It is devoted to the role of mushrooms, particularly the Fly Agaric (Amanita muscaria) in cultural traditions. The Fly Agaric is the most iconic of all mushrooms. Its bright red cap, dotted with white cottony spots, is depicted in children’s books such as Alice-in-Wonderland, children’s toys, and even yard ornaments.

In Clement Clarke Moore’s day in the early nineteenth century up to the creation of steam pleasure ships, such as the Titanic, readers experienced the world by reading travel literature. One book featured in the Lloyd Library and Museum’s exhibit by English naturalist Aubyn Trevor-Battye is “Ice-Bound on Kolguev” (1895).

Kolguev is a 1900-square mile island in the Barents Sea, at 69 degrees north latitude. In other words its climate is Arctic. Home to an indigenous tribe once called the Samoyed people, today they are properly known as the Nenets. In Trevor-Battye’s day they were nomads whose economy was entirely dependent upon reindeer for food, clothing, shelter, and mobility. Trevor-Battye planned a month-long birding trip to the Island in July of 1894. Arctic ice blocked passage of boats, so his month-long expedition turned into a year’s journey. He described the reindeer as fleet-of-foot, and when crossing a snow-packed ravine at a gallop, the Nenets’ reindeer-drawn sleds would literally become airborne.

Shamans of the Nenets (and other nomadic indigenous tribes of northern Europe) wore red-dyed reindeer coats, with white fur trim along the bottom, neck, and sleeve edges. High black reindeer skin boots, rolled down at the top were their footwear. Today the Nenets wear rubber boots of the same design. Their red caps were also trimmed with white fur. The colors honor their sacred mushroom the Fly Agaric. The Nenets nomadic dwellings, a cross between a teepee and a yurt, called a “choom” had an open smoke hole at the top. During summer months, Nenets shamans collected the red and white Fly Agaric mushrooms. They dried them, and during the deep snow of winter, shared them with the community, entering the choom through the “chimney” hole at the top. They also shared the mushrooms with their reindeer herds, who relished them and would prance and jump under their influence.

Inspired by the good deeds and benevolence of the second century saint, St. Nicholas, and obscure travel literature that described the shamans and material cultures of ancient indigenous tribes of Arctic Europe, give use the vision of Santa Claus that we know today, transformed into reality by the best traditions of American writers peppered with a high dose of American commerce.

I know for a fact that Santa Claus is real. As an eight-year-old, on Christmas eve, awake in my bed in an old house in Maine with a snow-covered roof, I am positive, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I heard Santa’s sleigh land on the roof. I will never forget the sound of the sleigh bells jingling as he took off.

Image caption: A Nenets (Samoyed) man throwing a di-zha (lasso) to capture reindeer. Reproduced from Ice-bound on Kolguev: A Chapter in the Exploration of Arctic Europe to Which is Added a Record of the Natural History of the Island by Aubyn Trevor-Battye, published in Westminster by Archibald Constable and Company, 1895.

The cycles of nature dictate everything is in a constant state of change. I write from  Austin, Texas, where the cycle of change means that for the third time on record, not one drop of rain fell to the earth in the month of November. If you look at the vegetation around here, it’s quite clear that this place is not far from being a desert.

Hundreds of miles south of Eureka Springs, rumors reach me that the Great Passion Play has its gates shuttered and chained, a victim of change or more likely, the inability to change. Nature adapts. From my home on Spring Street, with a view toward the eastern horizon, every sunrise and every moonrise is shadowed by the Christ of the Ozarks. The sun, the moon, sunny days, rainy days, rainbows, bolts of lightening and dark days are all wrapped-up in the outstretched arms of a manmade object that stands oblivious to changing nature.

In my late teens I recall searching for rare orchids with a friend in northern Maine in a remote area not far from the Canadian border. We walked along a railroad bed that had been abandoned five years earlier. I was struck by how in just five years that thoroughfare once kept clear of vegetation by racing tons of iron had been completely swallowed-up by lowly vegetation. One could not imagine that trains roamed the same trail just a few years earlier.

As I flew into Austin, knowing that the city’s commercial airport had in recent memory been an Air Force base, again I was struck by how the runway remnants no longer in use, once under the mighty whirling wheels of military jets, are now crags of black cracked asphalt hidden beneath waves of grass, weeds, and wildflowers, enveloping and overtaking the once invisible asphalt.

If the rumors are true, may I soon be staring toward the east and watching the sun and moon rise over a silhouette of vegetation once known as the Christ of the Ozarks? If that’s the case, I will smile and say, that’s the work of God.

©2012 Steven Foster

Carroll County Arkansas in the year 2077.

I’m dreaming of a bright Christmas—sunny with temperatures in the low 70s. The iconic “White Christmas” is so 1940s, forget the fact that Bing Crosby’s version of Irving Berlin’s song is the best-selling single of all time. We must look on the bright side of global warming or the more politically correct “climate change.” We just need to change our perspective.

Speaking with my 83-yr old dad in Maine over Thanksgiving, he remarked that as a kid, he and his friends were always skating by Thanksgiving. I reminded him, that we—his kids—were also skating by Thanksgiving! During my Maine childhood a white Christmas was a given. Now, ponds and lakes barely hold ice in a Maine winter. A white Christmas is merely a historical song from 1941.

It is true that all scientists actively involved in climate change research do not agree that the rise of global temperatures is the result of human activity. No, of 1,372 climate change scientists surveyed in 2010, only between 97–98 percent of scientists believed that global warming was caused by human activity. That leaves between 27-41 non-believer scientists (the 2-3%) that conservative “I told you so” faux journalists and faux policy makers can parade in front of cameras and hearings to dispute the reading on your thermometer. Why act when instead you can make jokes about Al Gore inventing the internet?

This week 17,000 attendees are debating data and policy at the 18^th United Nations Conferences of the Parties on Climate Change in Doha, Qatar. It’s the perfect venue since Doha is a man-made desert oasis in a tiny country with the highest per-capita carbon emissions in the world.  Not to worry. The conferees won’t do anything but talk. On November 27^th, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in their fourth assessment report, said whoops, we were wrong. Sea levels are rising 60 percent faster than our previous projections. Bye-bye Manhattan. Get to New Orleans while it’s still there.  Look on the bright side, who doesn’t want to turn down the heat and throw open the windows this winter? I’m dreaming of a bright Christmas!