Plant Medicine

As a practicing Medical Herbalist, I’ve been feeling very grateful for the accessibility to medicine that we have around us. That might mean common weeds in our gardens, native Kawa Kawa growing near our homes, even the culinary herbs we plant in our gardens.

Although I am licensed to provide practitioner only herbal formulas, Plant Medicine can be at our fingertips, given we have the knowledge of the plant and how to prepare it. One of my favourite preparations to utilise is an overnight infusion. Overnight infusions are great for extracting both the nutritional and medicinal constituents of the plant and mostly can be more palatable than taking a tincture. I also like that it means we drink more water during the day!

Overnight Infusion

You will need: A large glass jar (I like the large Agee jars you get about 3-4 cups of water), your dried or fresh plant usually about 5g per cup of water for dried and a bit more for fresh plants.

Put all your plant material in the jar, cover with boiled water, loosely put the lid on or you can put a small saucer on top. Covering the jar ensures the volatile oils remain in the infusion and don’t evaporate. Leave the jar over night (on your bench is fine). The next day you can strain the infusion if you like or keep the plant material in there and drink throughout the day!

Mostly we use more fragile plant material for infusions such as thin stems, leaves, flowers and sometimes seeds. Roots are more suited to decoctions (a process where the root or more fibrous plant material is boiled and simmered gently over a period of time).