When I was studying herbs five years ago, I learned that a common weed was used by the Cherokee to treat people who had a particular psychological malady: being haunted by a ghost that caused them to want to run away.<\/p>\n
I’ve been having that ailment lately. Some days I just\u00a0want to be somewhere else. I’m too old to run away, but there is a ghost hovering with a knapsack packed.<\/p>\n
So the other day when I saw huge clusters of\u00a0rabbit tobacco growing in a field, I gathered it up and took it home. Mostly I just wanted to smell it, but I thought I could use some of the\u00a0calming properties of\u00a0Gnaphalium obtusifolium<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Just sniffing this herb brings you right down to earth. It has a\u00a0strong, resiny smell like\u00a0tobacco, but with a spicy twist. The flowers stick around for months after they have opened and dried, and will still emit that smell for a very long time\u00a0afterward.<\/p>\n
Rabbit tobacco, also known as sweet everlasting, is not much used in\u00a0mainstream herbalism, but is known by us Southern herbalists as a great treatment for cough, cold, or other respiratory problems, and as a pain reliever and sedative. If you live anywhere in the south you can easily find some<\/a>.<\/p>\n According to herbalist Matthew Wood<\/a>, the Cherokee named it rabbit tobacco because<\/p>\n It is said that Rabbit, while untangling himself from a thicket, first discovered the properties of this plant as a cure for cuts.\u00a0 It was widely used by the Indian people \u2013 as well as Euro-Americans \u2013 for this purpose.\u00a0 Another story explains that Rabbit uses sweet everlasting as a tobacco to communicate with Creator, just as humans have their own kinds of tobacco.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I stuffed the whole plant, leaves flowers and stems, into a half-gallon jar and poured boiling water over it. The tea was brown and rich.<\/p>\n As I sipped it, inhaling deeply, memories of the mountains from these nine years came to me. The sight of the first chickweed in spring, the sound of a hard Georgia rain hitting the trees, the piney smell of sweet gum leaves when you rub them between your fingers, the taste of sassafras root tea and wild mushrooms…<\/p>\n After a few cups, I was absorbed in my table of art glass, making new pieces. I didn’t want to run anywhere. The ghost was gone.<\/p>\n Today’s penny is a 2012, the year I first harvested\u00a0a bunch of rabbit tobacco near Booger Hollow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When I was studying herbs five years ago, I learned that a common weed was used by the Cherokee to treat people who had a particular psychological malady: being haunted by a ghost that caused them to want to run away. I’ve been having that ailment lately. Some days I just\u00a0want to be somewhere else. … read more Rabbit tobacco<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9330,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[321],"tags":[52,1252,1253,1225,1207,867,1251],"class_list":["post-9329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tress","tag-52","tag-calming","tag-cherokee","tag-ghost","tag-herbalism","tag-plant","tag-tea"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9329"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9329\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9333,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9329\/revisions\/9333"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}