Spellroot

Avens - an intro and discovery.

Are you familiar with Avens?

This time of year it's just dropping its five bright yellow petals to leave an alien looking green hair covered ball on its antenna. Generally considered a weed, it grows in gardens, along paths, and keeps company with dandelions along the edges of things. I learned it simply to know every plant in my yard.

I don't know why it's called Avens - but I remember it as "avien." The leaves are multi lobed, and if you squint and imagine the terminal leaflet can be a peacocks tail - the little leaflets on either side could be wings. You just have to ignore the fact that it has more wings going all the way up to its head.

At the school where I work - every plant has a spell tied to use and lore - it's Latin name the incantation, a piece of the plant the spell component. Tasked with finding the spell for Avens the only lore I could find for it was that it's considered "protection from evil."

It seemed weird - but we already had spells for Oregon grape and Devil's club - and I couldn't find anything else - so the children now seek out Avens before any long journey, chanting Geum Macrophylum as they go.

Dig up Avens and you get these tiny spindly roots reminiscent of buttercup. They're not inspiring roots, and although the whole plant is edible, it never occurred to me to try them until I caught legend that they taste like nutmeg. Dutifully I dug them up, washed, and tasted them.

The taste is reminiscent of nutmeg. It's also adjacent to cloves and allspice. Avens root is the kind of spice you would find in eggnog or chai, or smell in a bakery around Christmas. It's all those things but unique.

The main compound, I discover, is eugenol the same stuff that gives cloves its punch. Like cloves, its antimicrobial, used by old herbalists for toothaches, mouthwashes, and "protection from plague." Geum urbanum - the European variant has the common name "Clove root."

And of course it protects against evil. "Protection from evil" is shorthand for antimicrobial. Long before germ theory we've had evil invisible spirits that brought sickness, which are not truly such different beasties from microscopic bacteria that do the same.

As I get deeper into ancestral skills, I love finding the little tidbits of things that work better than the modern equivalent. I'm not one to use a bone drill when a power drill works better. But obsidian is better for skinning than steel. Pitch glue is like plastic you can repair when it breaks. And Avens is my new favorite spice.

I'm gonna be harvesting a bunch for Christmas.