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ANATOMY OF A ROSE -- EXPLORING THE SECRET LIFE OF FLOWERS |
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SIXTEEN: Phytoremediation I AM SITTING NAKED in a hot spring. The water is a delicious 103 degrees Fahrenheit, mint smells strongly, cottonwoods and alders leaf above my head, yellow cliffs crumble above the trees, blue sky is above everything. Sliding deeper into the pool's warmth, I cushion my head against a rock and enter the drama of the bank: a tiny flower, an ant, another ant, a confrontation. My friend next to me is also naked. Her pale legs shift and stir up mud so that a brown wash darkens her left breast. This hot spring is one of many in this canyon where, at the turn of the century, a sanitarium for consumptives was built around these heated pools. People wanted nature to cure them. They came for the sun and the air and the power of the land. Some were cured, and some were not. After a few years, the sanitarium failed. The land was sold as a cattle ranch, and the cattle ranch failed, and a group of hippies bought this place in the 1970s with the dream of creating an international community, another kind of cure. The children of these hippies are still here. They walk about naked when they choose and take long baths in the hot water. From this mint pool, a canyon runs northeast. My friend and I decide to walk under the brown and yellow cliffs, no higher than a two-story house. A small stream snakes over rounded rocks and soft sand. Barefoot, naked, we go slowly, from rock to rock. A juniper reaches out to catch my skin. Tall grass scuffles in the shadows between sun and stone. I feel, suddenly, alienated from this world. We want nature to cure us. My friend says, no, she would rather I did not write about her body, so I must write about mine. It is ordinary and I think about it in ordinary ways, the stomach too soft, the breasts nice. I see cellulite when I turn in a certain way. I am self-conscious, and I know this is odd: No one is watching me but me. My friend moves easily with her bare thighs. She lives in a place where naked is normal. *** FOR A LONG TIME NOW, flowers have cured us in very direct ways. A quarter of our prescription drugs contain some part or synthesis of a flowering plant. At the same time, only 1 percent of plant species in the world have been studied for their medical use. In folk medicine, the rosy periwinkle in Madagascar was prescribed for diabetes. When researchers began studying the flower, they found that extracts of the plant also reduced white blood cell counts and suppressed bone marrow activity. These experiments led to the isolation of two chemicals now used against childhood leukemia. With these drugs, a child's survival rate has increased from 10 to 95 percent. For centuries, healers in Africa recommended a fruit called bitter kola for infections. In the 1990s, Nigerian scientists discovered that compounds of bitter kola may be effective against the Ebola virus, which causes a fatal disease characterized by severe bleeding. Ebola is a symbol of all the horrific diseases ahead of us, viruses that have mutated, epidemics that rise out of the jungle and the places we disturb. We have had no defense against the Ebola virus. Now, we may have the bitter kola. On my walk with my friend, through a canyon in New Mexico, we stop before a ragged Emory oak, its gray-green leaves pointed, their edges sharp. All parts of all oaks have an antiseptic effect. Oak is the basic astringent, a wash for inflammations, a gargle for sore throats, a dressing for cuts. All around me are plants that heal and connect to the human body. The yucca spiking above is a steroid. Mullein acts as a mild sedative. Mullein root increases the tone of the bladder. Juniper is used for cystitis. Yarrow clots blood. My body is interwoven into the chemistry of juniper and yarrow. The tone of my bladder is related to mullein root. How can we doubt our place in the natural world? From every habitat, I hear a chorus of cures. In the American West, for menstrual cramps, I might take angelica, cornflower, cow parsnip, evening primrose, licorice, motherwort, pennyroyal, peony, poleo, raspberry, storksbill, or wormwood. For tonsillitis, I could try cachana, cranesbill, mallow, potentilla, red root, or sage. For a sunburn, I might turn to penstemon and prickly poppy. The juice of the prickly poppy was once used to treat a cloudy cornea. The poppy helps, as well, with inflammations of the prostate. I stand in a canyon of crumbling yellow cliffs, embarrassed to be without my clothes, my soft stomach showing, my vanity showing, my prudery showing. Where else, besides my bed and bath, would I stand like this, exposed? In the doctor's office. In the hospital, in illness and pain. To be cured there, I must also be naked. I must let myself be seen. *** IN THE FIRST HALF of the twentieth century, the physician Edward Bach discovered in himself an unusual sensitivity to plants. He felt calmed or relieved near certain flowers. Others made him nauseous. Bach came to believe that the "liquid energy" of a flower steeped in spring water, warmed in sunlight, and mixed with brandy could cure the emotional problems at the root of human disease. He came up with thirty-eight flower remedies, mostly found within a few miles of his home. They are classed into seven groups for problems such as fear, uncertainty, "insufficient interest in present circumstances," "over-sensitivity to influences and ideas," despondency, and "over-care of the welfare of others." The seven groups divide into finer categories. The monkeyflower is for fears you can name, whereas the catkins of aspen are for vaguer feelings of dread. Clematis restores those who live more in dreams than in reality. Honeysuckle restores those who live in the past. Wild chestnut is the remedy for the woman obsessed with a repetitive thought. Violet, impatiens, and heather are suggested for loneliness. The Bach Flower Remedies are still sold today. They are based on the belief that our biochemical, cellular self is further fine-tuned by other, subtler energies, what the Chinese call ch'i and the Indians call prana, absorbed through the meridian and chakra systems. Flowers influence this energy flow. Flowers raise vibrations and open channels. Flowers act as a catalyst for change. Over the years, people have added to Bach's work. The sunflower was not on the original list. Today, as a flower remedy, the essence of sunflower is recommended for people who suffer from arrogance, as well as for people who have low self-esteem. The Bach Flower Remedies are easy to make fun of. They almost seem to make fun of themselves. But I do not want to make fun of them. At least, not too much. I take all this as metaphor, and I take metaphor as the essence of how we think and live. I also believe that a sunflower can cure arrogance. I know for a fact that violets make me less lonely. *** PHYTOREMEDIATION COMES from the word phyta, meaning plants, and remediation, the act of repairing or healing. Phytoremediation is a new field in science and a new business investment. Certain plants have the ability to take in and absorb toxic metals, which the stems and leaves of the plant hold safely in their cells and use in defense against insects or infection. These plants are now being used to clean up polluted soil. In a Boston suburb, alpine pennycress drew up lead, zinc, and cadmium from a backyard where children were not allowed to play. Most plants cannot tolerate more than 500 parts per million dry weight of zinc. But pennycress stores up to 25,000 parts per million. At an abandoned zinc smelting plant, pennycress increased its rate of absorption of zinc and cadmium in the second and third year. The now-contaminated plants were then uprooted and safely destroyed. Other flowering plants are being considered for a variety of jobs. Poplar trees have been used to remove chlorinated solvents in groundwater. Clover may remove petroleum. In India, aquatic plants deal with the chromium produced by tanneries. Some plants can defuse explosive compounds like TNT in the soil. Sacred datura takes up heavy metals like lead. Cabbage can reduce radioactive particles. Sunflowers also absorb and store radioactive material. A company in New Jersey used sunflowers to decontaminate a uranium factory. In their hydroponic tanks, the roots of the sunflowers created a bio-filter for wastewater. In experiments in Chernobyl, sunflowers absorbed 95 percent of radioactive strontium in a pool near the leaky reactor. In 1996, the U.S. secretary of defense and the Ukrainian defense minister ceremoniously sprinkled sunflower seeds over a former missile silo. In the United States, the sunflower remains an important economic crop, grown for its seeds and oil. Fields of sunflowers unfurl across the American Midwest like great blazing banners of yellow and orange. The Incas of Peru used to worship the sunflower as a symbol of the sun and their sun god. In gardens, right now, people grow sunflowers and fall down before them. These people are stunned, compelled to worship again. *** WE MAY NEED to be cured by flowers. We may need to strip naked and let the petals fall on our shoulders, down our bellies, against our thighs. We may need to lie naked in fields of wildflowers. We may need to walk naked through beauty. We may need to walk naked through color. We may need to walk naked through scent. We may need to walk naked through sex and death. We may need to feel beauty on our skin. We may need to walk the pollen path, among the flowers that are everywhere. We can still smell our grandmother's garden. Our grandmother is still alive.
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