Teasel Harvest| Sunshine Botanicals

I had discussed the situation with some students from one of my Herbology classes in Tulsa last Spring, and in September, I received a letter from one of them. He had run across a section in Matthew Wood’s really ex-cellent book, “The Book of Herbal Wisdom”. Wood recorded his limited but positive experience with Lyme, using the root of Teasel (Dipsacus spp.), an herb completely unfamiliar to me. A little internet research showed he was not alone, so I tracked down some of the tincture. (It is not easy to find. One spe-cies of the plant is used in Chinese medicine, but traditional Western herbal history is virtually silent on its use.) Whether from hope or desperation, Wood’s short discourse on it was sufficient to get me to try it.