Planting the Future

PIPSISSEWA

Chimaphila spp.

STEPHEN HARROD BUHNER

There is an inescapable feeling to old-growth forest that all who have been touched by it know. We have no words for it, yet it is as real, and as important, as the first kiss of our beloved or the touch of an elder’s hand. It comes into the body as the breath into the lungs and is as necessary for life. Even the memory of it is redolent with the scent of ancient soil. When freshly encountered, a part of us remembers in its timeless presence who we are and that we do have purpose in the world.

Such old-growth forests are now only tiny islands surrounded by the roiling waters of our modern world. Each year angry currents nibble away the edges of the wild banks that still front them, and the islands become smaller still.

I was fortunate to live for a decade in one such protected enclave of wildness that had not known the ax. Within it, in that incredible diversity, I first used herbal medicines and discovered that more resided in spiritually inhabited landscapes than I knew; there is also healing there for the ills of humankind.

Eventually I had to leave that wonderful land and move to the Pacific Northwest to land neither so lucky nor so protected. There, that wonderful first home still taught me, but this time by its absence. I had, over the years, come to trust the medicinal bounty that had surrounded me. I knew the plants and their healing well, and human physicians were a rarity in my life. But when I moved to a distant land and eventually became ill, I found myself without the healing allies upon which I had relied for so long—and I became very ill indeed. I knew then what it had been like when the Native Americans, displaced by forced removal, became strangers in a strange land. The part of the self that relies on the medicinal bounty of plants reaches out and finds . . . only strangers. It is a feeling of great vulnerability. Such a knowledge base takes years, if not generations, to rebuild. In a desperation that I am sure they must have also felt, I began learning the plants of my new home, making a relationship once again with the deep healing of Earth and forest. Eventually I prevailed upon two local foresters to take me for a walk in the woods in which they worked each day, woods that they know as well as I know my own hands.

It was here that we came upon a small plant with a beautiful flower and shiny leaves with the taste of wintergreen. The foresters’ eyes lit up. They picked a leaf and rubbed it and held it under my nose, urging me to smell. And so I met pyrola, a plant of which I had not heard but which now entered my world. Thus the healing world that I had left began to come to me again in new forms. Slowly I found forests—not so protected as those I had known, but still old and deep. And within them I found that feeling I had missed. Under their shade and the slow dappling of sunlight, within the emerald green that exists in deep, healthy forest, I found new plants and new healing allies. Pyrola is one of them and, after a time, I was lucky enough to meet and begin to know pyrola’s close relative pipsissewa.

Pipsissewa’s main recognizable features are its small size, its deep green leathery leaves, and its mild wintergreen smell, released when the leaves are crushed. Its Latin name, Chimaphila, is from the Greek kheima-phileo, which means “winter loving” and refers to the hardy evergreen leaves that can be found, like uva-ursi, throughout all seasons of the year. In fact, the common name for nearly all the pipsissewas and their close relatives the pyrolas and gaultherias is wintergreen, because of their similarity of appearance, their evergreen nature, and the unique smell they all possess that we now commonly call wintergreen. Pipsissewa seeks deep-shaded forests and the loamy, uncompressed soil formed from years of undisturbed leaf and needle composting. It grows from creeping rootstocks that slowly move through the deep forest soil, putting out sometimes dense clusters of plants. The plant itself is a spokelike whorl of dark green leathery leaves with jagged, sawtoothed edges around a creeping, greenish woody stem. It puts up a brownish flower stalk in May or June, producing beautiful deep pink and white flowers. It is a tiny plant compared to the forests in which it grows, rarely exceeding 12 inches in height. The jagged leaves are 2 to 3 inches long, the flowers ¼ to ¾ inch across. The plant grows throughout the northern latitudes of the world. The primary species in the United States is Chimaphila umbellata, but there are two others. The spotted wintergreen (C. maculata), long known in Europe, has whitish mottling along the leaf veins and grows in Arizona, Utah, Nevada, Mexico, and the eastern United States. Little pipsissewa (C. menziesii), is found only in the Pacific states, from British Columbia to southern California. The leaves of little pipsissewa are slightly spotted and not so whorled in appearance; they are more alternate and less pronouncedly toothed.

Pipsissewa was originally termed Pyrola maculata and considered a part of the Ericaceae family. Between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries its name was changed to Chimaphila maculata. As earnest Ph.D. students in the twentieth century sought new topics for dissertations, the entire plant world began undergoing reclassification. As part of this the pipsissewas and pyrolas have been given their own family—the Pyrolaceae or Wintergreen family. Most herbals and botanic reference books still list it among the Ericaceae. As with so much of this reclassification, there is much foolishness—the Wintergreen family, for instance, doesn’t contain the one plant universally considered to be the “real” wintergreen, Gaultheria procumbens.

Historically, pipsissewa has been used for medicine throughout its extensive range by all ancient and indigenous peoples. It was well known in Europe and more than thirty indigenous tribes routinely used it as an indispensable part of their materia medica in North America, primarily as an analgesic, for hemorrhages, and as a urinary antiseptic and tonifier.

Along with the other wintergreens and birch sap and twigs—which also have that distinctive wintergreen taste—the pipsissewas were long used in “diet” drinks, that is, beers fermented specifically to aid the gastrointestinal tract. Birch was the first wintergreen flavored plant used in root beer: The tree was tapped like the maples and sassafras root bark boiled in the sugary sap to produce the now recognizable flavor of a “root” beer, then the whole was fermented and bottled and consumed as a spring tonic beer. These beers were quite popular. The flavor and tonic effects of the plants caught on, and any species with that familiar taste was soon incorporated into the making of herbal beers. With the temperance movement and prohibition, these herbal beers and “diet” drinks became sodas, not fermented alcohol beverages. Unfortunately, the slow-growing and hard-to-propagate pipsissewas are still being hunted by companies that dig up 100-ton lots for incorporation into “natural” sodas. The plants are no longer used for their medicinal effects but solely for the flavoring that comes from only a few of their chemical constituents—a flavoring that could be supplied easily from more sustainable resources.

The many species of pipsissewa have been used for healing as long as there have been human diseases. In 1633 Gerarde-Johnson commented:

Pyrola [meaning pipsissewa] is a most singular wound hearbe, either given inwardly, or applied outwardly: the leaves whereof stamped and strained, and the juice made into an unguent, or healing salve, with waxe, oile, and turpentine, doth cure wounds, ulcers, and fistulas, that are mundified from the callous and tough matter, which keepeth the same from healing. The decoction hereof, made with wine, is commended to close up and heale wounds of the entrailes, and inward parts: it is also good for ulcers of the kidnies, especially made with water and the roots of comfrey added thereto.

The Eclectics, botanic physicians of the nineteenth century, used pipsissewa (which they called chimaphila) as a diuretic, tonic, alterative, and astringent. Specifically they used it for genitourinary conditions attended with catarrh and foul discharge. They felt it of special benefit in urinary tract infections, prostatic irritation and inflammation, and gonorrhea.

Nowadays, the plant is used almost exclusively for urinary tract infections (UTIs) that have proved intractable to other forms of treatment and are accompanied by pain and inflammation. One of pipsissewa’s chemical constituents, arbutin, hydrolyzes in the body to the urinary antiseptic hydroquinone, which is excreted by the kidneys and thus passes through the bladder and urinary tract, where it contacts the inflamed and infected tissues directly. Pipsissewa is quite kind to inflamed urinary tract tissues, being milder than uva-ursi and much less vigorous than juniper berries. For this reason it has found a continuous presence among contemporary herbalists in the treatment of UTIs.

The plant is also strongly astringent, meaning that it dries and contracts moist and bleeding tissues. This makes it of special benefit internally for bleeding from stomach ulceration, birthing, or gum disease. For bleeding external wounds it may be powdered and placed on the wound itself. External application of the fresh plant will irritate the skin—it was traditionally used as a vesicant and rubefacient by both the Eclectics and indigenous healers.

The smell we call wintergreen is produced by plants containing methyl salicylate, the early forerunner to aspirin. All plants containing it were traditionally used for their analgesic properties, and pipsissewa was no exception. This analgesic or pain-relieving action makes it a good herb to use for bleeding or urinary tract infections accompanied by pain. Historically, many indigenous people also used it during the onset of colds and flu to help with the aches and pains of those diseases and to stimulate sweating so as to move the disease more rapidly through the body and bring down fever.

Pipsissewa is used primarily either tinctured or as a tea. For a fresh plant tincture, add the fresh plant to twice its weight of pure grain alcohol; for instance, if you have 4 ounces of plant, add 8 ounces (liquid measure) of alcohol. For a dry plant tincture, add the dried plant to five times its weight of a 70 percent alcohol-water blend. Thus, if you have 4 ounces of dried plant, add 20 ounces of liquid—14 of pure grain alcohol and 6 of water. Use only spring-, well, or bottled water for tinctures. Let steep two weeks and then decant, pressing all the liquid you can out of the plant material. For UTIs use a full dropperful (30 drops) of the tincture per 150 pounds of body weight three times a day. Though some people do not like it, the tincture (and tea) is a unique combination of three flavors: at first bitter, then drying, then a wonderful sweetness only faintly reminiscent of wintergreen.

For tea, chop the dried plant coarsely and use a full teaspoon per cup of water. Do not boil; steep only. For UTIs, colds, and flu, 2 or 3 cups should be consumed throughout the day. If you wish to use fresh plant for tea, add a handful of chopped herb to a quart of water for sun tea.

For postpartum hemorrhages or stomach ulceration, drink as much of the tea as you can comfortably until the bleeding stops. Both the tincture and tea are unusual but not at all unpleasant to the taste.

Though the plants produce seeds it is nearly impossible to propagate from them. Pipsissewa (like osha, Ligusticum porteri) resents domestication and continually frustrates human insistence that it get with the renewable-growing program. It exists in a nicely symbiotic relationship with the forest, soil, and plants among which it grows; without an exact duplication of that environment, it simply will not cooperate with humans. Mature plants, along with some of the creeping rootstock that produce them, can be dug up and transplanted to an identical forest ecosystem (this may also be tried with the seeds). If the plants like you and the fates smile upon you, they might even agree to grow there. Short of that, they should simply be left to go on their plant way without interference. If you have them growing in abundance where you live, by all means use them for the healing of your family and friends. Commercial harvesting and industrial use are actively discouraged—the declining plant populations, their difficult and shy nature, and their slow growth all point to a necessary protected status. The plant is considered endangered in New Hampshire and rare in Canada; it is protected by law in New York state.

Because of the endangered nature of pipsissewa, only the top third of the aboveground plant should be harvested, and then only selectively. Harvest the flowering plant and tincture fresh, or dry loosely out of the sun. Try to harvest only from the periphery of healthy plant stands—pipsissewa cannot grow in compacted soils, and the human foot compacts soils quite nicely wherever it treads. Be aware that harvesting of pipsissewa, because of its endangered status, is illegal in some states.

UpS RECOMMENDATIONS

• Use primarily cultivated resources.

• Possible substitutes are uva-ursi, golden-rod, and gravel root.

Pyrola species are abundant and may be used almost identically, with identical results for both UTIs and pain. Uva-ursi, while not as mild in its action, is as effective for urinary tract infections and is an extremely abundant plant. It, too, is extremely astringent—it has been used to tan leather in many places around the globe—but it lacks the analgesic action of pipsissewa because it contains no methyl salicylate. A mix of 2 parts Uva-ursi and 1 part black birch twig tincture should duplicate the actions of pipsissewa quite nicely.

If we do not protect plants such as pipsissewa, especially those unwilling to become domesticated, we may all find ourselves as the relocated Native Americans did: strangers in a strange land with no healing allies to help us in our illnesses, in forests empty of birdsong, and devoid of that smiling diversity of life that is the hallmark of the old-growth forest and the habitat of pipsissewa.

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