Wildcrafting Ethics, Botany, and Trailblazing Herbalism with Howie Brounstein

Wildcrafting has gotten trendy, and that's not always a good thing. Misidentified plants, sketchy sourcing claims, and a whole lot of misinformation are floating around social media right now, and it's worth slowing down to talk about why that matters.

Howie Brounstein, founder of Columbine School of Botanical Studies and an herbalist who has been teaching for over 40 years, talks about why botany matters, what real wildcrafting ethics actually look like, and why he’s scared by a lot of what he sees online.

What's in this episode:

• The real risks of misidentification and why positive plant ID is non-negotiable
• Why botany matters, and when it doesn't need to be your focus as an herbalist
• How to evaluate herb books and spot information that isn't coming from real experience
• Why Howie teaches a long-term apprenticeship instead of one-day wildcrafting classes
• Why Howie believes you should taste every herb you give to someone else
• What it was like building an herbal career in the late 1970s when nobody believed it was possible
• How AI and social media are accelerating herbal misinformation

For full show notes, resources, and links visit: theherbalistspath.com/blog/herbal-wildcrafting-ethics-howie-Brounstein

Learn more about Howie's apprenticeship and classes at botanicalstudies.net

Wondering how you can use your herbal skills to help people when times are tough?

Grab Medicine For The People - An Herbalist's Guide To Showing Up For Your Community In Times of Need

It's loaded with ideas and resources to help you help others!💚 Click here to ge

Transcript

Why Wildcrafting Makes Him Cringe

SPEAKER_00 0:00

When I first saw uh I'd rather be wildcrafting bumper sticker, I just cringed. I'm sketched out by most people wildcrafting, very frankly. I see a lot of real questionable stuff going on. I don't teach people one day, oh, here's how you're wildcraft, now go out. I take it very seriously. Uh, commitment to go through the classes at least one term at a time. So students get enough of a skill to at least be able to not poison themselves or someone else or damage the earth by mistake.

SPEAKER_01 0:35

Welcome to the herbalist path. If you love learning about the power of plant medicine and how to use it in your life, this show is for you. I'm Mel Mutterspot, clinical herbalist, herbal educator, and your host. In each episode, you're gonna hear me sharing herbal insights and knowledge from my 25 plus years of working with and learning from the plants. Plus, I'm gonna share interviews with some of the most amazing herbalists, educators, farmers, and healers out there all bringing their herbal wisdom here for you. Really, this show is all about continuing this movement to put an herbalist in every home and a healer in every community. Again. Thank you so much for listening and welcome to the herbalist path. Enjoy the show. I'm super excited to get to hang out and chat with you on this little episode, this little podcast of mine. You're always funny and entertaining and enlightening and loaded with all kinds of great knowledge.

SPEAKER_00 1:43

I do see you a lot on the internet right now, but I on social media, but I think that's because I've been like looking at your stuff a few times and interacting with you, and now everything you post shows up.

SPEAKER_01 1:53

I haven't posted for a couple of weeks. I haven't had the energy or time or capacity to really show up on social media, but it's one of those necessary things. I have to do it. Yeah, you have to.

SPEAKER_00 2:04

Very frankly, I used to get most of my business through for my apprenticeship. Selling my apprenticeship is difficult. It's not like selling a $10 item. But when you're talking about four or five thousand dollars, six months time commitment, and moving to Oregon, that's a big commitment. So it's a little different in advertising, but most of my advertising is word of mouth, and most of it came from the Oregon Country Fair.

Welcome To The Herbalist Path

SPEAKER_00 2:30

It all shifted with the internet. Yeah. And it's really important to get it out there. It's also been really interesting, even though I'm doing internet, still, most of it is word of mouth. It's just the internet reminding the people to tell their friends. It's that's kind of what's been happening. I've been kind of pushing the social media when I can.

SPEAKER_01 2:49

It's no easy feat, like keeping up with it. But I did love the video that you and Steven just did. That was great for the Oshala camp. I really wish I could go to that, but it's just not going to happen. I will be down there for Herb Camp, though.

SPEAKER_00 3:01

Yeah. Yeah, Steve really convinced me to do that with him. And I wasn't teaching in Southern California this year. So every year, I usually still go down there and spend a good chunk of March in the spring of the Sonoran Colorado desert, but not this year. I decided to stay home and he was like, let's do this, let's do this. I'm like, okay, let's do it. So Steve and I don't teach that much right now together. We do some. He comes in on classes once in a while, and we occasionally do a plant walk or something like that together. We taught for 25 years. Steve originally started taking some open lectures when he signed up for the apprenticeship, and then he started taking all the classes, and then he ended up working with me to pay off his debt because I used to run a tincture company for many years. Columbines and Wizardry Herbs, Inc. back in uh before before the Columbines thing in Colorado, and

Teaching Herbalism In The Internet Age

SPEAKER_00 4:00

before rainbows became popular.

SPEAKER_01 4:02

I love it. Yeah, I know not long ago you posted a pretty vintage couple of uh photos of you and Steve, and then you so much younger, and what an inspiration you are to me. I've only had the great fortune of you teaching when I was at Portland School traditional Western herbalism. And I have so badly wanted to go down and do your field apprenticeship for so long, but I was at the early stages of motherhood, and there was no way I was gonna be able to do the kinds of commitments that are involved in that.

SPEAKER_00 4:32

But there's still time now.

SPEAKER_01 4:34

I know, and I'm getting older, and so is said child. So there's not as much requirement, and all my family's down there, so I've got places to stay and all that good stuff.

SPEAKER_00 4:43

So where are you located?

SPEAKER_01 4:44

I'm up on that hood.

SPEAKER_00 4:46

Oh, you only have to come down for a once-a-week field trip and the lectures you can do by Zoom.

SPEAKER_01 4:53

Nice, the field trips would be my favorite part.

SPEAKER_00 4:55

Yeah, um, it's pretty amazing. Things have changed, and it's really interesting because the classes I teach are generally hands-on. Field work, it's very hands-on. And the teachers making sure through constant repetition that you have the concepts necessary to move to the next levels. Because when you're teaching about identification, it's one thing, but then when you're teaching about using plants, at a certain point, it becomes very important for your health and for the health of your friends, it becomes really important that you understand certain things. Otherwise, it could be dangerous. So we make really sure every step of the way that people have the skills necessary to move to the next levels. But it's a lot different when people are on Zoom. A lot of teachers will teach a class, and if you're not paying attention, if you missed a bunch, that's your responsibility. I'm giving you the material. Now it's your responsibility to learn it. But in Columbines, uh it's exactly the opposite. I present the material and the core material, it's the teacher's responsibility to repeat and use the information enough that we know that the people know it, the students know it. We don't give tests, but on the other hand, some people say we give more tests than anybody we know because we ask people the information back all the time. We constantly ask what is the name of this plant, or how do you use a bitter? I might ask if someone takes my spring and summer class, I might ask them 40 or 50 times, give me a use for a bitter. Yeah. And that's real interesting. The whole repetition. Where did you see me teach? You took you some.

SPEAKER_01 6:27

I went to Chris Maka's Portland School of Traditional Western Herbalism. You came and did a few classes there with us.

SPEAKER_00 6:33

So did you see me teach with Christy Reese at that church-like place?

SPEAKER_01 6:38

Or did you know it was the one on Alberta?

SPEAKER_00 6:41

Oh, yeah, that was my solo reunion tour together again. I remember that one. I had fun doing that. I actually got that from Arlo Guthrie. Arlo Guthrie had a solo reunion tour. I remember that. So I took that and in my uh what does he call that herbal rock star kind of deal, said it was like my solo reunion tour. Oh, I remember that class. I taught about Oregon Grade.

SPEAKER_01 7:05

You did. Yeah, that was it feels like so long ago. It was long ago, but not that long in the grand scheme of things, right?

SPEAKER_00 7:12

Yeah, not geologically, not since the last ice age, but yeah, exactly. It's been a long time ago, right?

SPEAKER_01 7:18

In my little timeline for sure, a long time ago. But yeah, you've always been just such an entertaining educator. And I think what you're saying about the repetition and really taking on that responsibility, a teacher, of making sure that your students actually understand the material and hitting them back with questions. What would you do? How would you use this particular plant? Oh, if you see whatever kind of complaint from a person, how are you going to ask deeper questions to figure out more? I think that states a lot about you as a quality educator. I got into herbalism, my background's in environmental and experiential ed. So I was very big on hands-on education. And I loved teaching herbal classes in my community. And then, yes, the whole online swell of things, like the challenge of learning how to teach herbalism online after years and years of here, look at this, touch this, feel this, smell this, taste this. To like, hi, here I am on this box, and you get to look on me at me on this box, and ensuring that people are really walking away understanding what you're sharing and being able to then take that understanding and regurgitate it to whoever it is that they need to, usually friends, family, community members. Yeah, speaks a lot to your skill as a teacher. And I thank you for that.

SPEAKER_00 8:42

Thank you. The people listening may not realize I teach a number of different classes. Yeah. And the class that I've been talking about is my apprenticeship class, but that's a long-term class in the spring. That's 10 all-day in the woods field trips and one overnight field trip running from mid-April till the end of June. That's the spring term. And then there's 23 lectures. There's a lecture on Wednesday night that's ecology and botany, and going over the field trips. And then there's another lecture on Thursday night, which is herbal concepts, and that's open to anybody, the herbal concepts class. That's just 10 weeks on Thursdays. And with that comes a once-a-month Monday, which is herbal preparations. And I've been talking about that whole full-on apprenticeship aspect. And yeah, it's very interesting. I'm really proud of the fact that nobody in my class has ever poisoned themselves in class. Winning. But more importantly, nobody who's taken my class has ever poisoned themselves or anyone else after they've gotten out of the class, which is even a bigger statement. When you're looking at life-death decisions based upon identification or based upon preparations, then it is my responsibility. If the person isn't listening and didn't pay attention during that class because they were on their phone and so they don't have a key piece that couldn't make a life-death decision or send someone to the hospital, that's just not appropriate to me. I take, I might not be legally responsible at a certain point, but morally and ethically to me, that's why when it comes to actually harvesting plants, and this is different than learning a weedy plant in uh and just learning one and its use. But if you're going to learn how to identify plants in the wild and then use them, that's

Repetition And Responsibility In Training

SPEAKER_00 10:30

why I'll go ahead and do a long-term, a long-term class. That way you can look at the not only the uses, but the ecology and the interaction with with other members of the of the environment and the ecosystem, including humans and including you. All these things interact, not just how does the plant grow and what animals eat it, or how it affects soil stability or insect populations. It also has to do with who's been taking care of this before you were here and how long has it been here, and how does society view it? How do how are you interacting with society? Or is it against the law for you to pick this plant? Should you be worried about it? Do you need a permit? Otherwise, you're gonna freak out, or do you not need a permit? Anyway, that's like well tracking ethics.

SPEAKER_01 11:14

That's so much of what I wanted to ask you about, Howie. The fact that Columbine's school of BS, Botanical Studies, which how can you not laugh at you guys? That was like intentional. You know, I love that. Let's talk about let's talk about botany and like why does that matter? Because so many botany, obviously, it's a deep science in and of itself, and you are so good at breaking all of that down. You spend so much time in the field with your students. That's what has had me like, I want to go to highway school for so many years to just hang out in the woods and look at the plants and look at the bugs and look at everything all around me and learn just from them, but also with a human guide to help me see it in a different perspective, I think kicks ass. So I'm gonna let you talk about that, why that's important.

SPEAKER_00 12:01

Well, in the old days, doctors were all botanists, that was part of it. But so I really think that a lot of this has to do with the type of herbalist you want to become. Herbalist is such a broad-sweeping term, it could mean so many different things. But I'm assuming the concept of this instance is that you want to give herbs to people for their health, whether it's community-based, basically acute problems, or whether it's in a clinic seeing people for an hour or two and on a regular basis and coordinating with doctors and things like that. Whether either way, so you're looking at that's your primary purpose. Why would you need botany? You don't really, you can get around without it, but it would enrich what you're doing dramatically. And if that's what you want to do is gather plants. If you want to gather your own plants, you need to be able to identify the plant that you're gathering, and you need to be able to know if you're causing any damage. Those are some major things. You need to know what kind of impact you're making. That's a lot, that's a really big thing. If that's the direction you need to go, but you don't necessarily need as an herbalist to wildcraft your own herbs, and your focus may be different. If you were going to, let's say, some kind of herbal college, then botany should be one of the electives. Of course, you might end up taking a basic botany class and then forgetting all of it, which is usually what happens in a college, and maybe a few lines that you remember, like how difficult that test was or something. But you may end up really getting into phytopharmacy, maybe, but you might want to get really into the chemicals. That might be really what you get into, uh, organic chemistry based. You could say the same thing. How could you be uh an herbalist without wanting to jump into the details of the flavonoids and the pyrolazoline alkaloids and bitter receptors, and then you get deeper and deeper into like anatomy and physiology? Sure, we all want to have a little bit of that, but you don't necessarily have to go that deep into it, but you go really deep into it. You might want to go into the ethnobotany and the history and go into research of the histories of the plants and the writings of the past and really look at what other people have used your herbs for. That's a good thing. And you can get way into that. You become like an expert on eclectic medicine, like so many people have done. The eclectics were herbal doctors in the late 1800s in the United States, early 1900s. You might get into that stuff and other history of indigenous uses and use that to help base your clinic experience. There's no question about that. There's all different aspects, and depending on what kind of herbalist you are, and let's not forget like direct knowledge from the plants themselves, that might be something of value. And all these things are important, but then how much of each is really depending on what it is you're going for. Certainly, you should be at least have a basic introduction to all aspects, whether it's science, history, direct experience with the plants, and clinical experience, how you've used the herbs and how they've helped people or not help people. All these things are like really important in running and learning. How deep you go in any one of them depends on what it is you're looking for. Doctors in the past were all botanists because that's where all the herbs came from. You had to go and make sure they were the right herbs and you had to get them. Now you can just order the herbs. So it's a different you can get away with just doing that. There's no problem. I think it's really important that people learn how to make their own textures and learn how to harvest their own plants. But that may be uh uh a small piece of what you do. You may pick the chickweed from your garden or something, that's fine. There's nothing wrong with that, but that may be the limit of what you do and make preparations, make salves with it or something. That's great. But that may not be the main focus of your herbalism. I'm not going to judge how you decide what your deepest part is. On the other hand, the reason I focus on botany is one, I'm teaching people how to gather plants. You could just go and learn one plant and learn that the field characteristics for that plant, and then be able to harvest that plant and then be able to use it, and then learn all the ways that one plant connects with the ecology and the people, etc. That's one thing, then and that's great. That's there's nothing wrong with that. My class is not about one

Why Botany Changes Everything

SPEAKER_00 16:30

plant, it's about the basic skills, the generalized knowledge applicable throughout the world. So I'm teaching people how to identify all plants. I'm teaching people how to use taxonomic keys, which are science books that have lots of big words. But if you can use a key, then you can go anywhere in the world that has a key and you can identify that plant. And if you can't identify it with the key, you'll know why. You'll be left with a question. I have to figure this answer out. I gotta look at these little hairs, and I can't see them because it's raining and I left my hand lens at home. I you'll be stuck at a question that you might need to answer, but eventually you'll you can make it to what it is. So that gives you the ability to identify plants throughout the world. And uh the other aspect of this is the fact that we're going out from the time the snow melts, more or less, things are changing, to just before everything closes up for the winter. So you get to watch the plants grow throughout the whole season. So the snow melts and plants come out of the ground, and those plants are not the plants you're looking for, but those plants grow in the same place just before the plant you want comes out. Those are like indicator plants. So then you watch the plant come out and it's just some few leaves, and then it gets bigger and bigger, and then as it's growing, we might taste some leaves and see what it tastes like, or taste a piece of the root to see what it feels like and what effects it has, and then watch it grow and see what animals eat it, and see what plants grow with it, and see how it grows after the animals eat it, and then watch it bloom and see what pollinates it, and then watch it go to fruit, tasting it throughout the weeks to see how its flavors and effects change, and then watch it die back, and then see what other plants grow after it. Indicator plants saying that this plant grows in the same place as your plant, but it grows later. So you can maybe use it to locate populations and uh and and then maybe harvest some of the plant and smear it all over us and put it inside us, abs and oils and tinctures and teas. So it's like when you do something like that, you're watching the plant all year. That's a really important skill. That's that is also direct knowledge from the plant, and it also helps put you in connection with the earth. And to me, that's a whole nother aspect of like why I'm teaching botany and why I'm teaching wildcrafting, which is to help you re-define and deepen relationship with nature, which is really important in our society. That's one of the things that's lost, and that's one of the things that's so important. Many of our students, if they were gonna have a breakup or their house burns down, or their cars they get fired, is this massive depression or life change, and people don't know what to do, they drink or they do drugs, or they stay home and just spend time on the internet, on social media, scrolling, and they don't leave the house. These things happen, and students after taking the class would then, if things like that happen, they go to the woods or to the earth, to the desert, and it helps gain the perspective of what's going on. And that's really to me in teaching, that's some of the biggest point, is you have to remember when it comes to gathering plants for food or for medicine, when you gather the plant and you give it to somebody, they get nourished or they become healthy. On the other hand, there's this another kind of healing that happens when the person picks the plant. The wildcrafter has a certain amount of healing that happens from harvesting. A lot of this just has to do with being really conscious as to what's going on, for sure. So I teach botany, I think it's a real important skill. Besides that, another reason why I teach botany is I teach botany using keys, books, and that's quickly leaving the skill level of the it's changing. People don't want to do that, they want to use their iPhone. You hold the iPhone up and then click on it and it tells you what the plant is. And they're getting better at it, and they're they're gonna get really good at it, right? If you don't know exactly, there's some plants that if you don't know what to take a picture of, you're not gonna get a right answer. And then you need people who know the plants to be able to tell the computers to tell AI this is the plant. You have to have a proper identification first to be able to do that. But it's really sketchy to use that for wildcrafting or for eating or for life-death situations. This is it's really sketchy to do that. That might change in time. But what's eventually going to happen is you'll be able to get genetic testing. The genetic testing of plants has gotten cheaper and cheaper. When people go to be botanists in colleges, they take a class on plant ID generally, and that's it. And really what they go to is genetics. That's not all botanists, but that's definitely the major push in botany. And so it won't be long until you can get a device the size of your iPhone that you just touch the plant to and it tells you what it is because it's checking its genetics. That's not that far away. And then the concept of being able to take a book and identify what the plant is can become lost. It's really been borderline whether that would happen completely. Uh, I think that there's been some upswings in new books that have been updated. I've been real happy about that. But it's been real borderline that might disappear like indigenous languages. Skills and things that are being lost, or physical assessment for doctors. Doctors used to touch you. They used to be able to tell a lot about what's going on without tests. They would be able to touch you, smell you, though they wouldn't say they're smelling you. They're looking at you in a different way. They're taking reflexes and moving things around and visually inspecting the problem and other parts of your body and watching the way you talk and whether your nasal labial folds are approximately even things like that. And they're able to tell all these things from it. And that those skills are quickly becoming lost. It's unusual. New doctors don't learn the same stuff that they did not that long ago. People are much more relying on tests. And so there's a danger that skills are completely lost, much like being able to use a sextint and the stars and some math and being able to tell where you are. You can use your GPS when you take your boat to Hawaii, but if you get to the where Hawaii is supposed to be and it's not there because the GPS was wrong, then what are you going to do? Right? Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 23:10

That's that's the whole piece. These skills are so important without all of AI and the technology because we all have seen technology fail us time and time again. Like in this recording, I keep getting the your internet is unstable. And I'm like, I am sitting in my basement next to my Wi-Fi router.

SPEAKER_00 23:30

Read closer. I think it's saying that Howie is unstable.

SPEAKER_01 23:33

It could be me too. We never know. But yeah, just I think that those skills, and even if you're just taking the foundational levels of them, I think that they're really important because not to be all tin foil hat kind of gal, but I see a lot of the battles in our world being wrapped around technology, meaning that we're mad at you. Let's wipe out all of your technology or just completely mess it up. So why not have paper books that we can learn from? Why not have human beings that we can learn from? Why not have plants that we can touch and feel and learn from? I think it's really important. And I know you did a great job of expressing yeah, you can definitely be an herbalist without being a botanist. Botany is not my strong suit as an herbalist, yet I've here I am still doing herbalist things. But you are also very correct in there's so many different paths to herbalism, so many different ways to practice herbalism, so many different ones. And I feel like I've dipped my toes in almost all of them. Almost, but not really. Anyways, I do want to talk a little bit about something that you have some incredibly valuable insight on. You've been teaching herbalism and doing this work for almost as long as I've been alive. 42 years now, Columbine school has been happening, right? So some wisdom and wizardry has come along with that. And now I feel like I've seen a huge resurgence in the world and interest of herbal medicine, which is rad on so many fronts. Much of what got me into the world of herbalism was my deep, passionate love for nature and the connection and wanting to have so many other people have that connection in hopes that it would inspire them to take better care of our planet. But what I want to ask you is your thoughts or observations, opinions, whatever you want to drop on this about the world of wildcraft as it has become so much more common or cool or eager. You can think about all the times I've seen posts on social media where there's somebody like, hey, I've got this huge basket of this plant, and it's not that plant at all, or I've got this huge basket of this plant with it. Great. So you don't even know what the hell you harvested all of that plant for. I can go off on tangents here, but I would rather you share your insights and wisdom on that piece.

SPEAKER_00 26:09

Oh, yeah. When I first saw uh I'd rather be wildcrafting bumper sticker, I just cringed. Yeah. I'm sketched out by most people wildcrafting, very frankly. I see a lot of real questionable stuff going on. Like I say, I teach a long-term class. I don't teach people one day, oh, here's how you're wildcraft,

AI Plant ID And Lost Skills

SPEAKER_00 26:30

now go out. I take it very seriously, uh, commitment to go through the classes at least one term at a time, so students get enough of a skill to at least be able to not poison themselves or someone else or damage the earth by mistake. Those are kinds of the things I'm looking for. Most of the times I get really freaked out about people wildcrafting. And the internet, you may notice I don't post much about herbal uses, and I never or very rarely post pictures of people gathering plants. You don't see all my students with big amounts of plants. Some of my students want pictures like that posted on their own. But as far as Columbines goes, that's not my big sale. My big sale to me isn't going out and saying, This is a wildcrafting class. That we teach wildcrafting as part of uh as part of a whole picture. And I really believe that if in most cases, if you're gonna be wildcrafting, I say in most cases, there's certain plants that are almost impossible to get rid of and are, I would say, weedy in that sense and grow in disturbed areas that you're not really gonna hurt by harvesting. And if you took it all and and dug up the soil around it, it would just make it grow more. And you could learn to identify those plants by knowing the lookalikes in your area. Okay, so that's a different kind of wildcrafting, but people going out and just picking things, you gotta know what it is before you pick it, unless you're picking a sample to identify. You can always bring it down to your native plant society or your local herbrarium at one of the colleges, and those people will identify it for you 100% in most cases if you have the right pieces. Uh if it isn't all crushed up in your pocket for three days and bring the right plant and it's identifiable, someone will do that for you. There's no reason to be harvesting plants you think it might be that, or I just but I look on the internet and it just scares me. Just scares me. I'd be really cautious about buying things from people you don't know that are wildcrafted, and I would be even more and everybody says they're ethical, right? They're selling it. Does anyone say to you that it's unethical? No, like the other day, if you go down behind the bus station there, and there's that guy in the alleyway selling golden seal roots, he always says it's ethical. He says it was harvested sustainably. He doesn't tell you that he jumped over the fence at the golden seal preserve in the middle of the night and harvested a bunch of it. No, it fell off the truck. But yeah, when I look online and look at a lot of the things, and I think there's a couple things going on. One is on the internet, things just get repeated, even if they're wrong. And it might end up on a very repeatable site and it's wrong. And then once it's on a repeatable site, it gets really repeated. So yeah, to me, it's scary.

SPEAKER_01 29:31

I feel like it's a never-ending battle to try and uh inform in a way that can combat the misinformation on social media and the internet, and that it's such an incredible challenge. And especially when we consider the fact that as you uh brought up in the beginning of this chat, like you can be an herbalist in so many different ways and so many different factors around it. But specifically for the wildcrafting piece, like the misinformation and the trendiness of foraging and wildcrafting and the whole huge Facebook groups of we are these foragers, and I don't know. It's a frustrating challenge. That's all.

SPEAKER_00 30:11

You see what's happening, and I don't know how much people hear about it, but there's been a lot of mushroom poisonings this year, more than usual. And people die eating poison hemlock and water hemlock every year. It's not always on the media. One of the things I would urge people to do is be really careful about believing things on social media, just be careful about it, especially now with AI being in it. So many of the things in my feed are just totally made up. And especially if it's something that agrees with your whole philosophy and it's a point that furthers what you believe, even more so, you should look closely at it. Because that's really nasty to have fake information feeding what you believe. You may be believing something that's good for you and that's right for you, and that's a viable way to believe. But then when you're fed misinformation, then when you repeat that, you lose your integrity on that information. I just uh be really cautious on social media. And of course, I noticed you might want to ask me about herb books, and my key on herb books would be look for verifiable people. That's the first thing. And then look by humans. Yeah, make sure it's written by humans, and then when it's written by humans, you have to remember a lot of people, when they first get into herbalism, write a little booklet, a little easine, a little pamphlet that goes with the products they're selling that gives a little bit about each herb and what it's used for. And the person is usually just they use the herbs, but the experience is limited. You gain experience through time. So you write this little e-book, like this pamphlet, and you're gonna be embarrassed about it in 20 years, I'm sure, but whatever. Books are like old snapshots from the 70s where you're wearing bell bottoms, right? So it's like it's gonna be out of date eventually. But so people write those books and they do it because it's like a term paper. They go out and they get information from other books and they put together a little pamphlet. And nowadays, the information that you get to put that pamphlet together could be completely wrong and uh really askewed. And so that's you gotta look for someone who's using.

Wildcrafting Ethics And Real Risk

SPEAKER_00 32:30

I feel like when it comes to her books, you really want to get those books from people who have used the herbs. Yeah, those are the best ones. If you want to get books on foraging, edible plants, get it from people who forage, not people who've just looked it up and are repeating the information. I it's really hard to do when you're a brand new teacher because your experience is limited. But one of the things in Columbines with all our teachers, we put a disclaimer right in the beginning that says everything we talk about are things that we've experienced. And if it's not something that we've experienced, it's something that came from someone I trust. I'm gonna say who it is I got that from.

SPEAKER_01 33:13

Right.

SPEAKER_00 33:13

And and so with Columbines, we teach only things we know. And of course, I have teachers who know have less experience than I do that work with me, but they have experiences that I haven't had, right? I say, well, how's your experience with this herb? I don't have that experience, that's great. But so those are that's the other things is to look for the books that are as primary from the person as possible, and those are going to be the best books for you. And I'd also I'd also be really understanding that there are very different modalities of herbalism. And if you get a book on Ayurvedic herbalism, it doesn't really translate to Western Michael Moore type herbalism or Western European herbalism. It doesn't translate the same way. It may seem to translate, but it doesn't. Or if you get a book on traditional Chinese medicine viewpoint, that's not it's those are different models, completely different models. And I get a lot of people who are like, I want to take this class and I want to learn Western medicine and Chinese medicine and alchemy. And if you learn all these things, you're not gonna get anything. You're gonna get a taste of everything and nothing useful. And that's good for trying to decide which way you want to go. But if you're buying her books, you should definitely look for the modality that you're interested in. And unless you're just getting tastes of different modalities to figure out what you like, that's something to be aware of when it comes to books.

SPEAKER_01 34:39

Yeah, I think that's a great perspective. I think it was just today on Thread, somebody is like, What herb books should I get to give me knowledge about herbs? And I'm like, what a loaded question you are asking right now. What aspects of herbal knowledge are you seeking? What do you need for yourself? So that's a great tip there. And because you are somebody who has always fascinated me and your journey and story, what little I know of it, I want to hear about young herbalist Howie before this shit was so heavily popular. Like, how did Howie, little baby Howie, get into this herbal world and create your wizardry and all of that kind of stuff? Take me back to those days, please.

SPEAKER_00 35:23

You may or may not notice that I really avoid when did you how did you get into herbs? So I think I'll skip that how did I get into herbs thing? It go into when I was already into herbs. Okay, and I was making tinctures just for friends and family, and then I started putting labels on them because I was a young hippie with here in Eugene, Oregon. I was once a hippie back in the day. You don't say, and and I was also once a great beauty, as you could probably see from those old pictures. So at one point I had to think about making a living more than what I was just odds and ends doing. I was playing music on the street and in guitar and flute and restaurants and stuff, but I wasn't really making much money. I wasn't making much money on tinctures either. But I figured both of them were I could I had to pick one. I couldn't do both. One had to be like my job, and the other one had to be like my hobby. And I figured the chances of making it as a musician were so unlikely. It's so difficult to actually make it, make a living. Maybe I could play country music at the Ramada Inn uh every four days a week or something. I don't know. That's always possible, right? Now a lot of musicians have to pay music that you would like, and not that I don't like country music, I'm not saying that, I'm just giving it as an example. I don't know why I made the decision to stick with herbalism, because at that point there was like a slim chance you'd make it as a musician, but there was like no chance you'd make it as an herbalist. There were there weren't that many around as far as bubboard society, I would say. Because see, I have to be really careful because there's actually a whole bunch of herbalists around back then, but they were people of color, indigenous, and different groups of people who kept their herbalism to themselves and within their groups and didn't make a deal about it. But it was still active and alive, don't get me wrong. But as far as a popular society, you might say that there wasn't any herbalists. And when I when I made tinctures, people would say to me, I'm not gonna let you experiment on me by giving me that weird Valerian stuff. It's like there was people didn't know anything about it, and it was very difficult. I used to have to define wildcrafting in my advertising, and no one knew what tinctures were, and herbs were not popular. There wasn't any herbalism in that that was like it was a really you couldn't buy herb tea in the supermarket, you had to go to a special place to buy herb tea. You couldn't buy chamomile tea in the Ralph's or the Safeway or wherever it is to buy food, Pathmark. You couldn't go into just an ordinary store. And organics were organics are very different. Anyway, so there was no chance of making it, and with very few herbalists around me and very few herbal schools. Yeah, it was that was back in the late 70s, early 80s. I incorporated my first incarnation of this business in 1982, and I'd already been messing around with plants for many years before then. I was giving golden seal for staff back in the 70s.

SPEAKER_01 38:44

Where'd you get your golden seal back then? Were you still in Eugene? Are you born and raised Eugene guy?

SPEAKER_00 38:49

No, I came from New Jersey originally. And then I moved to to LA for my teenage years. I lived in the Hollywood Hills for a while. And then I moved to Eugene in the 70s. Yes. Yeah, where'd I get my golden seal back then? Yeah. You go to an herb store and buy golden seal.

SPEAKER_01 39:07

And I would imagine that in Eugene, they had herb stores.

SPEAKER_00 39:10

They had an herb store in Eugene, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:12

I knew all the herb stores. I used to drive down the west coast in my beat-up old converted PS10 Chevy milk truck and a delivery truck. And I used to with my little baby and my wife at the time, and we would drive up and down the coast delivering

Choosing Herb Books You Can Trust

SPEAKER_00 39:30

tinctures for many years.

SPEAKER_01 39:32

I love that.

SPEAKER_00 39:33

Four times a year, drive down to LA and back.

SPEAKER_01 39:36

She hit up a lot of the co-ops on the way.

SPEAKER_00 39:38

As many everyone there was that was on our destinations.

SPEAKER_01 39:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:42

Yeah. I went to all of them. That's fun. To sell tinctures. There wasn't it was a pretty bizarre thing to do at the time. Really, what it comes down to, it's so funny. You have a wide audience. It may seem different in other places and here in the West Coast in Eugene. But I remember sitting around a campfire and I had I had two teachers with me who were much younger. And the student asked, So, can you give me advice on I want to take this knowledge and I want to go in this direction, but nobody believes that's a direction you can go. There's no job in that direction. And so it's kind of like trailblazing, and nobody is supportive. And my folks and everybody else is telling me, don't do that. That's not even a choice you can make. But can you give me support on that? And they asked these younger people, but they didn't want my information because what do I know about trailblazing? I'm like nothing. Nothing. I I'm an owner of an herb school, right? Right? I'm as in society as possible. There's no trailblazing here. And you have to remember in this part of the country, people that look like me, that's not that unusual. It's not like I'm the only long-haired person in the county, which is like plenty of long-haired freaky people around Lane County for sure. People look at me, they think businessman, they don't think drug dealer or hippie. Totally. Nailed it. Outside of the area, it's a little different. But so people coming up from here look at me and they think of dad or grandpa and society, the person that's the teacher and the person that gives out loans, and the person that owns that marijuana grow that you trim at. Those are legal here, by the way. Now, unless I can say that. But it's so that's what it is. So people don't want to ask me about trailblazing. But when I started thinking with the herbs, that's exactly what it was trailblazing. There was no possibility of making money on it, or there weren't even a bunch of tincture companies at the time. It was like there's just a handful. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 41:43

And those ones, like the popular tincture companies, were just getting their start at that time as well. I think of herb farm and uh I think of eclectic herb, all just getting their start, right?

SPEAKER_00 41:53

And all just getting their start. Yeah. I started right around the same time as Herb Farm, but they had better business than I did. They had better business. Sarah knew how to do the advertising, how to really do it. I made different decisions that weren't as good. I eventually decided not to do it. At one point, Steve was making tinctures with me, and then at some point he started actually teaching with me. And and then he became like part owner of the business. And we pretty much saw that things were changing with making tinctures. And even then, like I could make minimum wage making tinctures and delivering them to local stores and driving around, and but it wasn't really enough to support my family and do the things I want to do as I got older. And Steve and I were like, we can either take this a step up, and that's what we decided to do, stop selling commercially. It's really exciting to make tinctures, it was really exciting to make herbal preparations. But the after filling the bottle for the 100,000th time, it starts losing its creativity.

SPEAKER_01 42:57

Howie, I understand fully. I also ran an herbal product line, and uh I guess I followed in your trail uh footsteps, whether I knew it or not. I was just a rebel and nobody was gonna stop me and I'm gonna make this happen and I'm gonna jump off the cliffs and figure it out on the way down. And for a little bitty herbalist, I took my product line pretty far. But then I got to that point where I was like, damn, I am really burnt out. What really matters to me here? What do I really want to do? What do I really love? And it comes down to I love education, I love teaching, I love watching people have that light bulb go off and be like, I get it. Oh my gosh, or this happened for me with a student or something along those lines. But you don't become a great teacher like yourself without having experiences like you did with the tincture company and having the experiences like you do with the plants, being there to teach you. You don't become a great teacher without experience, in my opinion, at least in this world of herbalism. So I think it's rad. And yes, you do have to come to that point when you're like, how far do I want to take this? What do I really want to do with this? And how hard do I want to work for very little money? At least it's kind of what came for me.

SPEAKER_00 44:16

I think another thing that was really interesting about those days is that not all, but most of the herbalists, many of whom are big name now, of the elder herbalists. Back then, when we're looking about late 70s, early 80s, resurgence, the what would they call it? The herbal renaissance or something. You see it in books sometimes. A lot of the people, like we didn't know that much about plants. We didn't know that much about herbalism. You use the information you had, you use the books that you had. There were only four or five herbal books, five or six herbal books when I was first starting. There weren't that many books, and you learned what you could. And so people were really skilled. But except for a few exceptions, most people know as much or more by going to a year or two of a basic herb school right now, without question, than the herbalists knew that back in the 80s when they were starting all this stuff.

SPEAKER_01 45:14

It's thanks to you and your generation doing the work, learning that we have all now tried to compile and compress all of that information into a one or two-year program, giving people this incredible amount of

Howie’s Early Days In Herbalism

SPEAKER_01 45:30

knowledge and information that then turns into skill once you actually put it into practice.

unknown 45:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:36

You can stuff your head with knowledge and information all damn day, but until you actually touch the plant, taste the plant, see the plant, feel the plant, watch somebody else feel the plant, understand how all of those things come together, then that's how skills development development, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_00 45:52

There's something I really believe in. I believe that you should taste all the herbs that you give people. Yeah. And I think no, a lot of people don't. Yeah. That goes with the concept of like doctors should take the drugs that should try the drugs that they prescribe to people. And I think that when it comes to that, you want to maybe say there has to be some limits and take everything isn't black and white, everything's really gray to some degree. And so should you have oncologists trying radio chemotherapy that might damage their bodies? Some people would say, yes. I don't know. It's a difficult thing to say, but I do feel that way about herbs that people should do it. Then you come to the quandary of I taste that herb and it feels really weird in my body. I can't take it, right? Can't take the herb. Then how do you give it to somebody? You have to figure that out in your own. And it doesn't feel the same to other people. But yeah, I think that's really important. And that brings us back to this whole concept of seeing and feeling the plant itself. A lot of people don't go out and see the plant, and a lot of people don't even see the dried herb in their hands. They just get it already made into tincture, made into a pill, made into a packaged tea bag or something, and they eliminate all these steps. I think it's really important to at the very least taste the plant. If you can't see it, at least at first when you're learning the plant, to taste it. How would I put it? So there are plants. Okay, let's talk about St. John's War, for example. A lot of people take St. John's War. Okay, but occasionally I run into a student that walks up to St. John's War and gets really creeped out and says, Oh, I don't want to be around that plant. I don't want to touch that plant. So they would never put that in their body unless they had, unless they were like listening to social media and everybody needs this plant. Then they come to the plant, I need it. And they try to ignore the fact that it creeps them out. But if you come to a plant and it's just this big no, and it you literally your body says, Don't, I don't even want to get near it, why would you put it in you? And it's if you don't see it and you don't smell it and you don't taste it, and you just take high doses in a pill, you're I think that you're much more likely to get those unwanted side effects that very few people get. And you have built-in warnings. So that's another reason I think to it's so important to see the plant as a whole.

SPEAKER_01 48:15

Yeah, I agree. I think it that really ties into the whole relationship piece of it all as well, that I think is really important. You actually build relationships with plants, and that can impact the way that they have an effect on your body. I have certainly felt that in pretty dramatic ways with certain plants where I can even at this point think of the plant and feel some of the effects that it has on my body just by thinking of that plant or seeing it. And it's fucking cool. It's a gift, right? It's a gift that I've been able to have the time and space to build those kinds of relationships. But yeah, you were talking about the importance of actually just tasting the herbs that you are going to offer to somebody.

SPEAKER_00 49:02

I do want to say that when you look back at my generation of herbalists back then, there was really no possible way of making money, and you're doing anything you can to make money doing it. But since there were no financially successful herbalists, and it's so different now, people go into herbalism as if it was a career that you could make money on, which I guess is now the case. It's possible you need to know business, not just herbalism. You need to know the business aspect of it if you want to make money on it. It's not the herbalism that you just can't plop into your career and you take off and let someone else take care of the business unless you find someone to do that. But back then there was like no possibility of actually making it in any big way, just doing herbs that way, and you could try, but it wasn't there. So most of the people that were these herbalists from my era did it solely out of the fact that it was their calling to do herbs, of the fact that the drive to work with herbs way stronger than like security, financial security.

SPEAKER_01 50:11

That's why you mean I don't know what you're talking about.

SPEAKER_00 50:14

But at least today you can look at that other herbalist that has a house. That's pretty impressive. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 50:20

But yes, you know, I think that that point that you were just speaking on herbalism is a calling, and eventually you do have to figure out is that calling a hobby? Is it something that you want to pursue more? And it's highly unlikely that you're going to get wealthy off of herbalism. And that is the reality that we live in. That reality, we see some people really doing it pretty freaking incredibly well, but either they started with a lot of money and had a lot of advantages there, and then were able to pay people to run the business part, or they've just been doing it long enough that they listened to the calling in a way that honored the plants, I think. And the plants are like, we'll help you put food on the table and pay your electric bill and all of those kinds of things. Yeah. Howie, you have so much wisdom to offer. You have this apprenticeship that, quite frankly, I've had my eyes on for about 15 years, give or take. I have always been like, I need to go to Columbines. And my family's all down around Eugene. And the fact that you do so much field work to me has always been really enticing. I love my time out in the field and learning from different people's points of view. And I know you have your apprenticeship coming up. I would love for listeners to one, know that you have the apprenticeship available in the event they want to come around and do it next year or any other time you offer it. And what other ways can people learn from you that are listening to this now?

SPEAKER_00 51:55

Oh, that's a good question. That's a very good question, Mel. Thank you for that question. So I teach this long-term apprenticeship, as I mentioned. And by the way, that is a three-year field apprenticeship. And you can go for three years doing field work with me. But I also teach a beginning lecture series that you can take online and a basic herbalism class that goes for two years and eventually goes into in-person clinic internship eventually after about two and a half years. But I do give some one-off classes. I occasionally will give a smoking mixtures class or something like that here or there. Usually I don't know exactly when and where those are going to happen. I do give a bunch of classes in the fall and spring. So I give uh three different physiology classes in the spring, which are designed specifically for herbalists, not just generalized physiology classes and a few other classes in the fall that are not as much commitment. I think this summer I'm gonna be giving a mini-series of just four classes and just about plants that anyone can sign up to and you can do online. I think I'm just gonna do a handful of plants. I want to talk about a ghost pipe just because a lot of people want to hear what they have to say about ghost pipe, and it's so popular now, and there's so much to say about it. I want to talk about ghost pipe and sagebrush and sages and maybe come free. And that's what I'm looking at. Those

Classes, Mailing List, And Closing

SPEAKER_00 53:30

four herbs, maybe a few more in a mini series, four, three-hour classes, open to anybody. I'll be doing that in uh probably July. So that's another one. And if you're interested in these kinds of things, you can get on my mailing list by going to our website at botanicalstudies.net. If you have some kind of social media account, such as Facebook, just uh Columbine School of Botanical Studies, or you can go to Instagram at Columbine School of or you can go to LinkedIn at Howie Brownstein. That's me. Could uh you could go to YouTube. I have videos on YouTube, but if you go to those other ones, you'll definitely see what classes I'm giving and when I post those usually a month before I do them. Maybe six weeks. I love that. Or herb rally, yeah. One of your competitors.

SPEAKER_01 54:25

Oh, he's not my competitor, he's an ally. He's definitely not a competitor. Sure, I guess in the grand scheme of things, but not in a you jerk don't ever talk about what you do. It's definitely not that flavor. We've both been on each other's pots, and I used to always meet up with Mason at all the events when I ran my product line. I'd always get sat next to Mountain Rose's huge fancy booth. And then there's Mason and me all nerding out on herbs for a whole weekend of whatever particular event it was. Yeah, that's the kind of competition I enjoy in the world of herbalism.

SPEAKER_00 54:58

Mason took off.

SPEAKER_01 54:59

Yeah, I know. And he did Missy School, which Missy was like, Oh, he said I should get on your podcast. And it's funny because Missy was my first interview back in 2019, right before the pandemic started, when I was still running my product line and I had no idea really what a podcast was all about. I just wanted to come on and talk about herbs to people. And so I did. And here I am six years later, still talking to people about herbs and bringing in other people that like to talk about herbs.

SPEAKER_00 55:25

And that's oh, I'm really glad that Missy was on your podcast. I sent her, I did send her to you. I said, Yeah, you should do that.

SPEAKER_01 55:32

Yeah. Yeah, it was so funny. She was like, Howie said I should reach out to you. I'm like, Howie said, Missy, I reached out to Howie to be like, hey, come on my show. He still hasn't come on my show. And Missy knows me well enough to know that if anytime she wants to come on the show and talk about herbs, I'm all about it. I love it. Thank you so much for being here. And you guys go follow Howie. He is he's been putting out a lot of great videos on social media that you can learn a lot about plants and how they grow and where they grow and all kinds of cool stuff. So check out Columbine School of BS and have a great day. Thank you so much for joining me on this episode of the Herbalist Path. If you're loving this journey into herbal medicine, please follow and review the show. It helps more people find their own path with the plant. And if you know someone who could use this kind of support, please share this episode with them. So that way we can keep making herbalism spread like wildflowers. Also, a reminder nothing shared on this podcast that intended to diagnose tree or cure anyway. Yeah, photography. But it's not too for personalized care for make qualified health factors. Always do your own research to your body. And when partner with the traffic professional, who honors both your intuition and your unique health turn.