Searching for Wild St Johns Wort

a treasure hunt for golden flowers

I was recently in Sydney doing the photoshoot for my new book (more to come on that later!) This was a whole amazing experience, I will talk more about it in another post, but today I just want to share this beautiful experience because it felt so magical and like such a blessing.

One of the challenges of doing a book about wild plants with a publisher is that it needs to fit into a publishers timeline. Which meant not being able to shoot everything in season, as we were shooting at only one time of the year. I tried to choose a shoulder season when late fruiting/flowering winter plants and early summer fruiting/flowering plants might both be around. Late October to early November. The other challenge was working in a city I don’t live in. We did the photoshoot in Sydney which having lived in Melbourne, Hobart and near Brisbane was my least familiar city (although interestingly, it was the city of my birth, which felt like a full circle moment to birth my book). So I reached out to the Sydney herbal community via the Herbarium on Facebook, a big thanks to everyone who helped and provided suggestions on where I might find the plants I was looking for. One of the main plants I was trying to find in flower was St John’s Wort but sadly the consensus was it wasn’t going to be in flower at that time of the year.

Through reaching out in this space I got a beautiful DM from the amazing herbalist and teacher Sally Kingsford Smith offering to help me find plants in Sydney. I also got a comment from Erin Lovell Verinder saying she knew a good St Johns Wort spot. So I messaged her asking if she would be willing to share this sacred herb lore that had been passed down from Jacqui Bushell to Erin and now hopefully to Sally and I. Because she is awesome and generous, she shared the spot via a written message that was to become our treasure map!

Throughout the week in meditation and prayer I was reaching out to St John’s Wort telling it about the project I was working on and asking for a few early blossoms.

When the day came Sally picked me up from inner Sydney and drove us up to the Blue Mountains where we followed the directions that led us to a simple car park beside a field. We were prepared for a big hike and a day of searching, I had given myself a good talking to about ‘respecting natures timing and not to be disappointed if we didn’t find any flowers because that’s just natures way, to everything there is a season and we need to respect that and so on and so forth. ‘

We headed down the path then up a hill and walked for about five minutes before we looked around and there it was! flowering St John’s Wort, a field of it! It felt like golden treasure, a miracle, like the answer to a prayer, like sacred herbal knowledge past down a sacred lineage and it was, it was all those things. Now it was going to be in the book in all its golden glory to share with everyone. Oh happy days.

This is what happy herbalist look like. Sally and I find the treasure!

We could hardly believe it had been so easy. We sat in gratitude and communication with the plants, we took what we needed, we took selfies and sent messages to those who had helped us on our quest. Then we went and had lunch to celebrate.

Perspective is a funny thing, people hate St John’s Wort because it is an invasive weed and an introduced species, and farmers and councils are always trying to get rid of it and I understand the rationale behind this, but for me this plant is pure joy, especially when for me it’s so hard to find as it doesn’t grow in Queensland. I am not advocating the planting of it, but I do advocate the use and appreciation of it, as I do for all my weedy friends. This plant, which by a small miracle ended up on the cover of my Wildcraft book, showed up for me yet again and I am truly grateful.

Big thanks to Sally for also knocking on the door of a random stranger to get me prickly pear fruit and flowers that were also out of season! What an awesome finder and herbal ally. Mwah! and to Erin for sharing the spot thank you!

What’s in store on The Wild World Substack?

I’m just getting started on Sunstack but I’m inspired and keen to turn this platform into my own little creative space for sharing knowledge about nature, plants and the wild world.

There are two tiers to my substack the free and the paid version and potentially the practitioner version (a paid mentoring version for students and practitioners of herbal medicine)

The free version will keep you up to date with what’s happening in my world and let you know about upcoming courses, HerbFest, my new book and exciting developments in my herbal offerings. Much the same as my previous newsletters. I would also like to make it a more collaborative space where I share offerings from other herbalists and invite interaction from the community. I would love to hear from you about how you’re already using herbs in your life.

The paid version is where I will be doing regular teaching. Over the next 12 months Im focusing on the wildcrafting series where I will be posting field videos, written content, podcasts and recipes that use the plants from my wildcraft book. I will explore each plant for a month posting new content each week so it’s not too overwhelming and you actually get to use what you are learning and go deeper with each plant. For those of you who have done The Herb Sessions Courses with me it’s a similar kind of offering (for a fraction of the price!) A yearly subscription is only $80, or you can subscribe for only $8 a month and cancel at anytime, plus there is a 7 day free trial for the paid posts.

The first bit of paid content will be a plant ID video on Farmers friends/cobblers pegs, bidens pilosa. It will be available from next Monday to paid subscribers. The second week we will cover uses, cautions and contraindications and how to harvest and store it, the third week I will show you how to use it as a green powder to boost protein and nutrition and the fourth week we will be using it as a juice and a gel for bacterial skin infections.

Herbal starter kits now come gift wrapped for Christmas!

Everyday Empowered herbal starter kits are designed to to cut the overwhelm, save you time and money, and build your confidence to make remedies yourself at home.

You can either give it as a gift or use it to make gifts for others.

The Kits include:

6 carefully selected, premium organic herbs
17 recipes and how to use the remedies
Micro Monograph booklet (info about each of the herbs)
Beeswax or vegan candalilla wax
2 tins – 1 smaller and 1 bigger
Spray bottle
Tin labels
Muslin cloth
Measuring cup

Give the gift of herbal indepence this Christmas.