Growing Goldenseal

Day 307: Goldenseal (Hydrastis canadensis) is native to the northeastern portions of the US and Canada, and has long been believed to afford health benefits to those who drink a tea made from its roots or leaves. While I can't speak to its efficacity as an herbal remedy, I can say that the bitter tea is a very effective thirst-quencher. It takes a while to accustom your taste buds to the flavour, but I now find it quite pleasant even without being sweetened. That said, Goldenseal was so hard to find in spice shops thirty years ago that when I found live plants for sale at Seattle's Pike Place Market, I bought two for my garden. After researching Hydrastis' habitat preferences, I uprooted an annoying patch of buttercups (also a member of the Ranunculaceae) on the north side of my garage and erected a short "lath house" over it to protect the plants from morning sun. A few years later, I removed the lath house and the plants have continued to flourish. I still have to pull buttercups from their bed every spring nevertheless.

You might think that by now, I should have a pretty good Goldenseal bed, and as far as personal use goes, that's true. However, each plant only bears two leaves...that's right, two is all you get. The roots are too precious to harvest for tea, so several times during the growing season, I go out with scissors in hand and trim an inch or so from the tips of the leaves until I have enough to steep in a quart of water. I take only one tip per leaf, returning later in the season to do another trimming. I keep the tea in the fridge for when I get really thirsty. One mouthful is all it takes to slake even a burning thirst. I leave the berries to develop, hoping that they will drop and make more little Goldenseal plants. My original two have multiplied to roughly a dozen and a half, thirty-six leaves which must be judiciously harvested with a mind to the future.