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Sea Buckthorn

I wrote this in the Autumn last year, but, due to technical glitches and my ineptitude it didn’t get published properly so, I decided to give it another run out. On the last day of the summer holidays in 2022 my youngest and I went back to the sea shore to gather the sea buckthorn berries we had seen during our holiday. We’re lucky to live quite close to the sea – although truthfully it’s not luck – I love the sea & have chosen to live close by. Anyhoo –

Hippophae by the sea

Sea buckthorn has the fabulous latin name Hippophae rhamnoides. Sadly the ‘Hippophae’ part doesn’t relate to hippos but comes from the greek word for horses. The leaves and berries were added to the animal’s fodder to fatten them up and improve or maintain health. The berries are highly nutritious with a surprisingly high (for a berry) oil (aka lipid) content, which may explain the fattening.
not a hippophae Sea buckthorn isn’t related to the laxative or cathartic buckthorns – Cascara sagrada or Rhamnus purshiana – so I think I shall adopt the use of one of it’s other common names to spare confusion and because it’s lovely and evocative – Seaberry. The leaf of the Seaberry reminds me of other plants that like to keep their evaporation down, they are not quite needles but are thin (lanceolate), waxy scaly. It has a similarity in this way to rosemary, myrtle, olive. For the Seaberry the problem is less about heat causing evoporation and more to do with the drying action of salt & wind. This may explain the oiliness of the berry and the waxy coating: trapping moisture in oil internally or with an external coating is an excellent strategy to guard against dryness.

Beautiful berries

The berries are a beautiful colour, truly orange, small and surprisingly difficult to gather – the Seaberry bush has random spines that catch you by surprise and the berries grow very close to the stems so they have to be individually plucked. Perhaps a fork with a paper cone held below would make this less time consuming, I muse to myself. A note for next time. We collect the berries in the way I always do from the wild, in the manner of a grazer, picking in one spot for a short while before moving on. I’m conscious that berries especially are food for birds and other creatures so never strip a bush or tree or buffet table, leaving some for other guests. Later I read on the Wildlife Trust website that thrushes are partial to the berries. As I harvest I’m using all my senses to interact with the plant – inhaling it’s scent, looking at it’s habit, the colour of its leaf, stem, bark, fruit. I think about what I know about sea buckthorn, and we eat some of the berries, actually my young companion eats quite a lot, enjoying the rush of the extreme sourness coupled with a fugitive sweetness.
Oi!, Leave it!
The berries are SO sour! A sure sign of good amounts of vitamin C and there is another flavour or scent that I can’t put my finger (nose, tongue) on. Is it vanilla? Something a bit sweet, a bit fragrant or resiny? Later I read it described as pineapple, hmm. I wonder about the essential oil content of the berry, I know the fruit has antioxidant (redox regulating) properties, probably due to the flavonoid and lycopene content, it also contains some phytosterols, vitamin E as well as the C, carotene, polyunsaturated fatty acids, fruit acids (ascorbic, malic), amino acids (including some essential ones like leucine), and trace minerals. As always the trace minerals will depend a little on the health of the soil. I have never explored the medicinal uses of Seaberry & make a mental note to research this later. I think about what preparation would make the most sense & decide on a vinegar. This is partly because I haven’t made any infused vinegars this year and partly because the vinegar will preserve more of the vitamin C content than a jelly or syrup. A low concentration alcohol extract would also work well but today, I feel vinegary. A good quality apple cider vinegar will also bring it’s own properties to the party.

Fruity goodness

Later I find the fingers I have been using to pluck the fruit are very smooth which makes me think about fruit acid (AHA) facial exfoliants and I wonder if I should’ve mashed some onto my face, ah well, there’s always next time.
Fruit mask
We get a bit distracted in our collecting by some really delicious ripe blackberries, so we graze on those for a while and then decide to save some to add to the vinegar. A bit later I also found some rosehips so we now have a vitamin C packed late summer fruit vinegar – a native superfruit vinegar!

Superfruit vinegar

I macerate all the fuits together in the vinegar for a couple of days to soften before giving them a good mashing with a potato masher, rolling pin or pestle -whatever will fit in the container- then shake as often as I remember for a couple of weeks. Then I strain off half the lush purple liquid and add some sugar to the unstrained part and leave this for another 10 days. The sugar captures some of the resinous oiliness of the Seaberry and make a drinkable purple sweet and sour ‘shrub’, well diluted with fizzy water. This may sound revolting but it’s actually a great refreshing drink, packed full of excellent phytochemicals.

When all else fails, make stuff

Whenever I feel a bit, you know, meh, I make things.

I prefer to make things that are useful immediately because if I’m feeling a bit meh it’s usually because I really SHOULD be doing something else that I don’t really want to so I can’t devote too much time to it, but equally I need the lift that creating something will give me.

Happily the other day I found a big box of raspberries in the freezer, grown on my allotment last summer, and there had been a heap of organic unwaxed lemons reduced at the supermarket so I made two pots of jam and 6 bottles of orange & lemon squash.

Continue reading “When all else fails, make stuff”

Collaborative Oncology CPD

Last weekend I travelled to London to attend a ‘Collaborative Oncology’ CPD seminar led by Chanchal Cabrera, a herbalist based in Canada.

CPD stands for Continuing Professional Development, like many professions herbalists aim to keep themselves up-to-date with the latest research. Continue reading “Collaborative Oncology CPD”