Dandelion with Marc Williams

-- TIMESTAMPS --  

• 00:00 - Introduction
• 02:39 - Marc’s journey to working with plants
• 09:11 - Why dandelion is one of Marc’s favorite herbs 
• 12:36 - The gifts of dandelion from roots to flowers 
• 18:13 - Why it’s worth making friends with bitters
• 22:57 - Pesto as a genre rather than an exact recipe
• 23:58 - How to identify dandelion
• 27:29 - Marc shares his current projects
• 30:28 - Marc’s thoughts on how herbs instill hope

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Transcript of the Dandelion with Marc Williams Video

Rosalee: Hello, and welcome to the Herbs With Rosalee podcast. I'm your host, Rosalee de la Forêt, and today I'm delighted to be here with Marc Williams. I've known of Marc for many years, and then a few years ago I had the pleasure of interviewing him for our Wild Remedies docuseries while we were at the International Herbs Symposium. Marc has a very impressive background. He's an ethnobiologist who has studied the people, plant, mushroom, and microbe interconnection intensively, while learning to employ botanicals and other life forms for food, medicine, and beauty in a regenerative manner.

His training includes a bachelor's degree in environmental studies, concentrating in sustainable agriculture with a minor in business from Warren Wilson College, and a master's degree in Appalachian studies, concentrating in sustainable development with a minor in geography and planning from Appalachian State University. He has spent over two decades working at a multitude of restaurants and various farms, and has traveled throughout 30 countries in Central, North, and South America and Europe, as well as all 50 states of the USA.

Mark has visited over 200 botanical gardens and research institutions during this process, while taking tens of thousands of pictures of representative plants and other entities. He has taught hundreds of classes to thousands of students about the marvelous world of people and their interface with other organisms while working with over 100 organizations, and particularly as board of directors member of the United Plant Savers and online at the website www.BotanyEveryDay.com. Marc's greatest hope is that this effort might help improve our current challenging, global, ecological situation.

Marc, welcome. I'm so glad to have you here today.

Marc: Thank you. Glad to be here.

Rosalee: Well, although I've known of your work for many years, especially through Botany Every Day, I have to say that when I was reading your bio, I was struck by a couple of things. One was that we have a lot in common in terms of approaching plants through a lens of interconnectedness and interdependence, as well as loving to travel and take photos. But two, also as someone who really dives in and is obviously driven by a lot of passion and a lot of heart, and I would love to start by hearing how you found yourself on this plant path because it obviously took a hold of you very strongly.

Marc: Yes, it certainly has taken hold of me very strongly, and yet it's been a fairly crooked road and not something that really occurred until my adulthood. And yeah, I guess I would like to give credit to someone who I don't think I ever have on a recording. Just in reflection getting ready for this, that a lady who was Kathleen Beatly at the time, now Kathleen Carroll. She was somebody I met in Gainesville, Florida when I was there going to school, and she became kind of a big sister figure, introduced me to this whole community of amazing people, and also the concept of this 10-day silent meditation retreat, called Vipassana, which happens all over the world. And as part of my first Vipassana 10-day meditation in '98, I got this insight that I really needed to know where the food that I was cooking came from.

I'd always loved to cook food, as a child even, and so had a number of different jobs. At that point, I was working at a place called Our Place Cafe, and they had a farm that was supplying them, called Phoenix Rising Farm north of Gainesville, back before that was so popular. And so, yeah, I started working at that farm, and a lady there named Laura, who was a coworker, started showing me some of the plants probably a lot of your listeners would recognize, the common weeds growing on the margins, and talking about their general uses as a wild edible or as a poultice for a bee sting or something like that. And that kind of clicked and combined with this piece in me, which I realized had been there kind of nascent or dormant since a child, of loving plants, loving nature, that mainly manifested in the realms of science fiction, like Tolkien and Dungeons and Dragons and thinking about wizards and elves. And I would play those kinds of games and was always the wizard elf.

And so then it just kind of clicked working with Laura at Phoenix Rising about, "Oh, you mean, people do this for real? This isn't just like make-believe?" And so I kind of just started delving, and I was a very active learner already, going to libraries, reading books and all that sort of stuff, but that led me also in the trail of Kathleen, to go to the Omega Institute and work there in Rhinebeck, New York, upstate New York. And that's where I did some of my initial first plant walks with actual professional plant walk people and herbal classes, and shortly right around there either before then or right after that, Juliet Blankespoor, who is part of that same community with me and Kathleen, was already amazing in the nineties.

And so she kind of took me under her wing a little bit and started showing me stuff about making salves and these types of things. And fairly shortly after that, though, I moved to the Asheville, North Carolina area where I live now, and really kind of started putting these pieces together that I learned at Omega, in particular learning about Annamarie Coleman and the Natural Gourmet. And I really learned the idea of food as medicine, I would say, through that connection. And so started just continuing to read, putting things together. I was working on a farm, I was working in a restaurant, and started to really try to kind of just basically learn the plants around me and grow as many as I could, and also started to evolve this concept that I still work with today of beauty being its own form of medicine.

So for instance, a flower bouquet as a form of herbalism, and so I was growing flowers at the restaurant for instance, and stuff like that. And so,  a little bit to just say in my backstory, I was raised my whole life to be an officer in the military until I was an adult. I went to college, a four-year ROTC scholarship and everything, and so it really was a big break from that to enter this realm. But it kind of all solidified within that couple few years. And by 2002, I was going to Warren Wilson and pretty firmly on the path. I would say a little bit before that, though, and something that has probably been the biggest, most profound influence on my whole life, was connecting with Frank Cook. And Frank Cook, being an herbalist that traveled all over the world, learned from different healers in that process, wrote a lot about his journeys and mentored a lot of people, including myself.

There is actually a whole website dedicated to Frank Cook and his work that I have been a big part in producing and upkeeping, which is plantsandhealers.org. If anybody wants to go further down the path with Frank and his journey and everything that he left for us to learn from, because he passed away in 2009, almost 13 years ago. On August 19th, it'll be 12 years, but anyway… That's been kind of a big part of the path, but I would say beyond that, the schooling that you mentioned in my bio, the travels, lots of books, I've got hundreds of books on plants, and lots of conferences as well, which like last time I saw you at the IHS, the International Herbal Symposium, would be an example.

Rosalee: Wow, thanks for sharing all that. I love all that kind of unfolding and going further down your path, and you've shared so much, and I'd have to say I'm still stuck on the fantasy fiction being a part of it just because I love that – another thing that we have in common. It makes me wonder how many people found that like, "Oh, this is real. I can do this in real life."

I'm also really glad that you brought up Frank Cook. I figured that you would. And for people who don't know Frank Cook, he was incredibly inspiring to so many people, and definitely check out plantsandhealers.org, and find out more about him. It's so important to learn from those who came before us, and there's a lot there, and a lot of work has gone into recording a lot of his teachings. So glad that you mentioned that as well. Well, let's move on to your chosen plant for today. This is easily one of my favorite plants. I love it because it's so practical. It's food, it's medicine, but I also love it because it has a lot of teachings for us as humans. I think all plants do, but there's something that really resonates in me with dandelion. So let's dive in by starting with why you love dandelion and why you chose dandelion for today.

Marc: Okay. Well, I love dandelion for a lot of things that you've mentioned, and for me a big influence in my life is this concept of permaculture, which hopefully people are familiar with. If you're not, then do us all a favor and go Google it and learn a little bit about that, because that's really one of the most important things going in maintaining our place on this planet. But one concept within permaculture is this idea of stacking functions and kind of building, building, building incrementally. And so I actually did a whole hour-long presentation, PowerPoint and everything on dandelion for the American Herbalist Guild this spring and was just amazed. I mean, I've loved the plant for practically decades now, but it just was mind blowing and spending, I don't even know how many, 20, 30, 40 hours, getting ready for this one-hour presentation, I'm reading the literature on dandelion and something that you think that you know so well and is so, yeah been there done that, but I'm excited to keep doing that presentation because I actually ran out of time to keep reading the literature. And so that was kind of also part of the inspiration year is to just kind of keep that ball moving forward, poco a poco, a little by little.

Rosalee: Is there something that sticks out in your mind that surprised you when you were prepping for that and in the research?

Marc: Something that surprised me? I mean, definitely a number of things, but a lot of good cancer research out of Canada on dandelion. Clinical uses of very easy preparations like aqueous extracts, like making a tea, basically was one of the bigger things. And yeah, just the traditions of dandelion all around the world as well, that are out there. Also, a lot of people think of dandelion as an exotic invasive, but there are actually a number of native species to North America, and there's debate, but it seems like it's probably the fact now that even the Taraxacum officinale now, the kind of classic dandelion that we think of, there are potentially native populations in North America, but there are a ton of other species and a lot of importance to a lot of other people around the world. And that was probably the biggest surprise, how many other species there are and all the research that has gone into looking at them.

Rosalee: Now if I was going to anthropomorphize dandelion a bit, which I have no problem doing, I think of it as like a people plant because it does grow where we grow, and it is so generous, and just in my relationship with dandelion, I love dandelion. Dandelion is so generous. It gives back to me. So it really feels like this give and take of reciprocal love there, and then I make as many wishes as I can when all the seed heads are out, so I'm helping to spread the dandelion, and it really is amazing how many gifts that the whole plant has. So I'm wondering if you'd like to dive into that? What are the gifts that you especially enjoy with dandelion?

Marc: Oh gosh. So many. Maybe I'll just start from the bottom and work my way out...

Rosalee: That's a good way to do it.

Marc: Right? You got the roots. And for me, mostly the roots are about making a tea, occasionally roasting and making the kind of coffee-like substitute that's caffeine-free. Brewing, I do a lot of brewing, making my own wine and beer, and use dandelion in that way, which I guess I would just say is a little countervailing because, to skip ahead to the flowers, that's often what people talk about when they're talking about wine, but I've found every single part to be very awesome. And thinking about from the biochemistry standpoint of that whole greater group, that family that dandelions are part of, the Aster Sunflower family, the inulin that's in there, the prebiotics, those good long-chain, big sugars that help to feed our probiotics are beneficial microbes in our microbiome. 

Rosalee: I kind of want to jump in there about that one, Marc, because I feel like that's just such a powerful thing right there. And I've been reading a lot lately about fiber and prebiotics and looking at how a lot of research with these expensive probiotics are really like a shot in the dark. There's not a lot of actual evidence that these expensive supplements really do dramatically change the microbiome. And moreover, there's not a lot of research even to say there's so many different formulations, but those formulations aren't necessarily studied and shown benefit, et cetera. But what we do know is one of the most powerful ways to change microbiome, which you can do it in a pretty short amount of time, is these prebiotics and fiber, and that is just so cool that dandelion root is rich in that. And actually the leaves have a higher inulin content, that is something I found in research, which just kind of blew my mind, but the leaves and the root, really high in this inulin, really high in just helping make our microbiome that much happier, which we're having this bigger and bigger understanding of how much that is a cornerstone to our overall health. So, yeah. Just a fabulous way to one of the many, many gifts of dandelion right there.

Marc: True that, and thanks for bringing that up. It's always awesome talking with folks like yourself. Of course, there's always more to learn. And like I said, I've spent so many hours on this plant, and I hadn't come across the leaves being higher in inulin, and I appreciate anything you want to forward to me from your research about dandelion, and I'm happy to reciprocate because that's how we grow as a community. But the leaves are definitely, just to kind of pick up where you left off, both in being high in inulin, of course, then they can also be an amazing food ingredient, and definitely putting them in solids. And I know as part of this process we're having together today, there's going to be a recipe people can access about putting dandelion into pesto. Of course, making a tea would be another thing as well.

And yeah, I'm sure there's so much more, but I'll keep moving. I – to be a little whimsical too – I think of like we did the root to the leaves, of course, then you have the stalk that goes to the little flower, and the stalk is hollow, and it's like a little hollow tube, and so that can be like a kind of fun little thing to. It could be a straw. Lots of people are talking about how unsustainable straws are now when they're made of plastic, and then they're making all this trash, so here you've got just a naturally occurring, very common plant that could be used in that way. You can also make some cool art. If you bisect that stem, it peels open kind of like a flower in and of itself. And as I had said earlier, I'm really into aesthetics as being its own form of healing beauty, especially in the form of food for celebrations, for memorials, for birthdays, for anniversaries. So that's something that I might use as a little bit of whimsy.

And then of course you get into the flowers, and I already mentioned wine, but you can certainly also put them in the tea. You can put them in a salad. You can use them as like a natural form of sprinkles, instead of eating some kind of red number 40, blue lake, whatever, you can just use lots of different things, dandelion being one, that can bring a little color to a salad, to a cake, to cupcakes, to you name it. And then of course you've got the classic thing, a lot of people learn early, once it's gone to seed, of blowing it, to make those sweet wishes for money, world peace, or lots of sweet kisses. That's Guy Nelly, and that's in his song about dandelions.

Rosalee: Hopefully. Yeah. It just keeps on giving. Let's go back to the leaves, because we do want to highlight those, and highlight the recipe. So those leaves, we could just talk about so many things about the leaves and nutrients. We mentioned inulin, but rich in so many wonderful minerals and vitamins as well, which you think about comparing a dandelion leaf to iceberg lettuce, and it's like... So really incomparable, but, of course, they have a different taste. Dandelion leaves and iceberg lettuce do not taste the same, even though they can be used the same in culinary ways in terms of salad greens, et cetera. But let's talk about the taste of those dandelion leaves.

Marc: Yeah. Well, man, that's such a fascinating little realm to explore. It sounds simple, but definitely a big influence on me, once again, from Frank Cook, is this conceptualization of bitter in particular, and how we have eschewed oftentimes, in the richer parts of the world, this flavor of bitter in favor of basically salt, sugar, and fat, and a whole lot of protein. And how most of our great medicines have these components of bitter and some of that medicine, of course, and detoxification and eating digestion, in particular benefiting the gallbladder, the liver, and kidney system. And yeah, I guess with Frank, in that conception, he really got me with this idea of needing to reclaim bitter, and to... At the same time, a professor at Warren Wilson kind of checked me because I was really infatuated with that. When I was doing the walk for him one time, he was like, "Well, bitter can also mean that you're going to die."

So it's really important, and it kind of gets into the core piece of a lot of my work is looking at plants by families. And I already introduced that concept of the dandelion being part of the Aster, the sunflower family, but the short of the long of it being that the bitters that are in the Aster sunflower family tend to be more towards this beneficial side, although not always, versus bitters that are in, say, what's called the nightshade family or the buttercup family, some families like that, where it really tends to be very strong medicine, very low-dose medicine, to potentially deadly poisonous.

Rosalee: Yeah. So those leaves there, they're bitter, then that bitter is great for us because it is like a workout for our digestive system and getting things prepped for digestion, kind of strengthening and toning digestion is another way I think about it, as well. And then we get the added benefit of the inulin, like we talked about, as well. So it's incredible digestive or really in so many ways, but that really blurs the line between food and medicine. Because if you make a dandelion leaf pesto, you could certainly eat it like food, but there's no denying that it's medicine as well on a level. And as Marc said, for listeners, as you probably know by now, I love to share recipes when we talk about these plants, because recipes are really a wonderful way for you to get involved and create your own experience with herbs. Because it's one thing to listen about the amazing gifts of dandelion, but this entirely other thing to form your own relationship with this plant through your own observations, through your own tending, and then of course your own tasting when appropriate.

And I love dandelion pesto. It is one of my most favorite things. And what I love about pesto is that there's so many different ways to do pesto, and Marc's dandelion pesto recipe is fabulous, and you can download your recipe card using the link above this transcript. 

All right. So, Marc, we've talked about the wonderful gifts of the roots, the leaves, the stems, the flowers. One thing I want to talk about before we move on is knowing how to identify dandelion, because I feel like a lot of people think like, "I know dandelion. It grows everywhere." But there's actually some lookalikes out there, and I know that you have quite a background and focus in botany, so I was wondering if you just mentioned some key features of identifying dandelion and deciphering them between dandelion lookalikes.

Marc: Sure. I'd be happy to. I do want to jump back just a little bit before that to around the kind of the recipe, the pesto, the bitter. One thing I'll say is that I definitely grew up with the Standard American Diet, which that acronym is S-A-D, SAD for the reasons I was just talking about. Couldn't stand bitter, and now nothing is too bitter for me practically, other than maybe Andrographis, I think is the one thing I've found. But dandelion is not really bitter to me. And some people talk about harvesting it at its least bitter state, but that's definitely something that I don't even think about, and this is something I'm just working out, but this idea that if things are more bitter than they might be more medicinal, too, I'm kind of wondering about that. And of course, that might not hold fast across all plants, but I've wondered about with some of these digestive bitters, as well, but just really wanting to hit home this need to embrace bitter.

And of course, then to fold into this idea of pesto more as a genre than as an exact recipe. That's another thing I totally picked up on from Frank Cook. This idea that pesto basically means paste in Italian, and most people are familiar with it now, but they might think of it as basil, pine nuts, parmesan, olive oil, and there we go. But Frank really taught me to think of pesto as any green, any nut or seed, any oil, cheese or no cheese. And I've had amazing pestos, in particular, that are dairy free, for anybody that's wondering about that. But you can select from a whole lot of other greens to mix in with your dandelions, and we have some examples on the recipe that can help kind of offset that bitter, if that's a thing for you. But I would say to maybe work over time to attenuate yourself to bitter because there's so many gifts that that flavor can give. And yeah, thinking about just the botany of dandelion and the identification of it, there are a number of really helpful ideas.

One is that dandelion is always going to have leaves that are always flat on the ground. So a lot of plants, they'll send up a flowering stalk, and then they'll have leaves on that flowering stalk. Dandelion will never have that, but there are some lookalikes to dandelion that will have leaves on the flowering stalk. Another thing is dandelion sends up a flowering stalk, and then there's just one little flower on the top of that stalk. A number of lookalikes to dandelion will go up, and then they'll branch off, and there'll be multiple flowers that look like dandelion, but all on that one stalk. Another thing is that the dandelions tend to be smooth. They might have like a little bit of hairiness here and there, but there are a number of different lookalikes to dandelions…those leaves that are on the ground will be very, very fuzzy. Chicory would be a classic example of that. When chicory is not flowering, it can be very hard for people to tell it apart from dandelion, but it is super hairy, and dandelion is pretty much smooth. 

So those are some examples, certainly looking at the edge of the leaves and that particular kind of toothiness. Of course, dandelion comes from the French, dent de lion, the tooth of the lion. And so looking at those different kinds of teeth and how they tend to be pretty big and jagged with the dandelion, versus maybe some lookalikes might have smaller teeth or no teeth at all, and they might have a broken up margin, but it will be more rounded, but smooth, not like kind of pointed on the edge. I'm sure there's some others, but I think with those alone you can pretty much tell it apart from most of the lookalikes.

Rosalee: Yeah. Yeah. That was great. Thank you. Yeah. And mentioning the dent de lion from French, I was surprised the first time I went to France with my husband, and his mom was telling me about how she's always harvested dandelions in the spring time. They live in the Alps, so the food there is super rich in the winter time. We're talking creams and potatoes and cured meats and stuff, those traditional foods. And so it was a big deal. Like, as soon as the dandelions came up in the springtime, everybody went and harvested those greens. It's just part of the tradition, but it was interesting to me that they didn't call them dent de lion.

Marc: They just call it pissenlit?

Rosalee: Yeah. They call them pissenlit, which sounds so pretty, but it really means 'pee in the bed', which is a good thing to mention when eating lots of dandelion leaves. They are diuretic, so you might notice that there's that, but that's also in itself kind of a cleansing effect of the dandelion. And what's interesting, too, is that a lot of pharmaceutical diuretics actually make you excrete a lot of potassium, and in dandelion leaves, there's a lot of potassium, and it doesn't have that same effect. So that's kind of another… nature wins in that category.

Marc: Yeah, with the pharmaceutical diuretics, you often have to take a potassium supplement. But with the dandelion, it's already built in.

Rosalee: Yeah, absolutely. Well, one of the things I really love about this podcast is finding out what things that my guests are working on, because there's so many creative and fun projects going out there. So I would love to hear what's on your mind these days, what you're working on.

Marc: Sure. Yeah. Thank you. Well, lots of things, always, and I would say the first one that comes to mind is United Plant Savers. I'm on the board of directors of the United Plant Savers, which is a conservation organization trying to preserve the heritage of particularly medicinal plants, mostly in North America, although we're extending that out to a more global standpoint. And so I've been doing a lot of work with them with their at-risk lists, which we are kind of updating. It's been around for quite a while, and also things with diversity and inclusion, which I would kind of extend that out broader to my work in general. That's kind of a big part of the cutting edge of my work is really honoring the traditions of Black, indigenous, and other people of color and lifting up the names and the traditions of often overlooked areas of herbal knowledge.

And yeah, so that's really big in every realm that I act on. And I think I'm certainly always excited about my online class that I do, Botany Every Day, which is another thing I inherited from Frank. He did it for nine years, and I did it for 12 years now, and got my newest class that's coming up, that's on exotic invasive plants, which is a huge subject unto itself that I'll try not to go off the rails about, because I've spent hundreds of hours of my life on it, and I know it's really big. So maybe we can follow up on that if you're interested. But I think kind of the biggest thing for me is working towards having my own school, which has been a long-held dream for a long time. And so the goal for that is to start up with that next spring in 2022, and yeah, just kind of putting all the pieces together around that, which has been a very humbling and slow going process, but it feels like it's finally about to come to fruition soon.

Rosalee: Oh, that is so exciting. I'm so happy to hear that, Marc. I know you just have so much to give, so much dirt time, as they say, behind you, and so many gifts to share, so I'm so happy to hear that. You'll definitely have to let me know as that develops because I would love to share that with everyone again, to make sure that people know about your blossoming school. Wonderful.

Marc: Awesome. Thank you.

Rosalee: Well, the last question we have is one that I'm asking all of my guests in Season One, and it's been an important question for me, and it's been really good to hear all the answers and just all these different takes on it. So the last question for you, Marc, is with all of the challenges that we're facing today, what are some ways that herbs instill hope in you?

Marc: Well, I'm going to pick up where I left off in the last one with this idea of exotic invasives. And once again, try to kind of keep it clear and concise because it's a very polarized subject, but I would say that basically... Kind of going off of David Winston, another very famous and renowned herbalist of North America, I think he has this class that says "The worst weeds can be your best medicine." Or Doug Elliot, who I mentioned earlier, has a class "Weeds For Your Needs." And so this idea, hearkening back to dandelion that some of the most common plants have all of these super powers that are right there at your doorstep, and this idea of embracing that, and teaching people to embrace that, and seeing this awakening in society of people that have an interest in that regard, and kind of flipping the script on just looking at these things as problems.

And in the parlance of permaculture, which I mentioned earlier, turning a problem into a resource potentially, which a lot of these things potentially can be. Not to say that they can't be big problems, too, so I just want to be clear on that. I love native plants, and I definitely don't tend to garden with things that people would consider invasive, although that is a bit of a blurry line across, as you might imagine, hundreds of different species. And I think that's a big part of the problem in the polarization is kind of narrowing it down to just A versus B, black versus white. These things are complicated. So embracing that complication has given me hope, in particular with exotic invasives. I've been really getting into the work of Matthew Chu, who's a PhD down at Arizona State University, lots of other folks closer to you.

Tao Orion is up there in the Pacific Northwest, has a book called Beyond the War on Invasive Species. So kind of reframing that is something that certainly has been helpful, but I definitely would say, too, that so often, at least in my conception of it, especially thinking about the mainstream society or something with herbalism, people are often thinking about, "Okay, so what pill, what potion, what tonic, what tincture, what tea, what thing do I need to do in order to get the effect?" And probably the biggest medicinal thing for me in the last year, which was literally one of the worst years, it was probably the worst year of my whole adult life last year, and just working in the garden, not expecting anything from it other than maybe some beauty from the flowers and to take pictures of those, but not with this end goal of, for instance, like what can I extract to make a tea or a tincture or whatever. And bringing in lots of native plants, once again, that I have no particular use or application for, was so soothing to my soul.

Just every single day of last year. I worked on building this native plant garden where I live, and probably have at least 60, 70, or more species in a space that's not much more than a hundred feet by a hundred feet or so. And it's been interesting, too, to flip the script on it. We have these exotic invasives, and there Microstegium would be an example, which is the scientific name for stilt grass, out of Asia. And when I worked on removing that and also another invasive, bittersweet, and then there are some natives that were kind of bullies and weeds in there, too, like golden ragwort and a plant called wingstem. I removed those, and like I said, no end goal thinking, "Okay, well I want this to be a medicine garden." But then once there was space made, I love the saying, "Nature adores a vacuum."

So in that space comes Hypericum punctatum, the native St. John's Wort, that is now, it's kind of like a weed in the garden. And I'm like, "Oh my God. How did St John's Wort, native no less, as a weed in the garden?" It’s just… mind blown, just to see how, if we can help and work and have this reciprocity and co-creation, then a lot of it will happen of its own accord, as well. That it's not all on us in order to kind of meet those ends that we desire.

Rosalee: Well, thank you again, Marc. Thanks for sharing how herbs instill hope in you. That was a beautiful sharing. And thanks for taking the time to be here today and to share your knowledge with all of us. I really appreciate you taking the time.

Marc: Thank you. I've appreciated your work from afar for many years, and yeah, just really appreciate you reaching out to have me on here, and I hope that we can meet up together again, down the line, probably hopefully in person as well, some conference somewhere, sometime.

Rosalee: Yeah. I look forward to that, Marc. Thank you very much. Don't forget to click the link above this transcript to get a free access to Mark's dandelion pesto recipe. You can also visit Marc directly at BotanyEveryDay.com. Before you go, be sure to click the subscribe below so that you'll be the first to get my new videos, including interviews like this. I'd also love to hear your thoughts about this interview and your relationship with dandelion. Leave them in the comments below. I deeply believe that this world needs more herbalists and plant-centered folks, and I'm so glad you're here as part of this herbal community. Have a beautiful day.

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Rosalee is an herbalist and author of the bestselling book Alchemy of Herbs: Transform Everyday Ingredients Into Foods & Remedies That Healand co-author of the bestselling book Wild Remedies: How to Forage Healing Foods and Craft Your Own Herbal Medicine. She's a registered herbalist with the American Herbalist Guild and has taught thousands of students through her online courses. Read about how Rosalee went from having a terminal illness to being a bestselling author in her full story here.