Gingko biloba Benefits
with Mary Morgaine Squire

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I have fallen in love with Mary Morgaine Squire’s plant love letter newsletters lately, and when I sat down to interview her it was made even more clear to me just how deep her connection with the herbs is!  I’m excited that she chose ginkgo (Gingko biloba) for her herb – it’s a new plant for the show and one I haven’t worked with much myself. I really enjoyed learning more about it.  I’m even trying to find a place to grow a ginkgo tree in my own yard now!

Mary shared so many wonderful things during our conversation – from a plant meditation to an excerpt from her love letter to ginkgo, plus her recipe for Sweet Memory Tea.  You can download your very own copy of Mary’s lovely recipe in the section below.

By the end of this episode, you’ll know:

► The connections between the history of ginkgo, its physical structure, and its medicinal benefits

► The best time of year to harvest ginkgo leaves

► How working with ginkgo can benefit your mind and heart

► Two ways to combine ginkgo with other herbs to enhance their own gifts

► and so much more…

For those of you who don’t know her, Mary Morgaine Squire, aka Mary Plantwalker, is a land steward, writer, educator, ceremonialist and avid gardener living in the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina. She began her walk with the plants at Fairhaven College in the early 90’s while earning a BA in sustainable living, and later traveled the world to learn from the plants and healers of indigenous cultures. Matthew Wood, Frank Cook and Juliet Blankespoor have been some of her many herbal teachers along the way.

Mary Morgaine creates sacred sanctuary wherever she goes, pouring her life energy into the space around her. Herb Mountain Farm, a healing botanical sanctuary that hosts events, a forest school and residential community, has been her home for many years and she is devoted to stewarding it with loving care. Her joy arises while tending the land and documenting the life unfolding on this magical planet through writing, photography and collage. Her prayer is that this work will inspire others to care deeply for our Mother Earth.

As a plantfolk woman, Mary Morgaine walks her talk by steeping herself daily in the spirit of the plants whether it’s eating something wild, drinking herbal tea, sitting under a tree or giving voice to the plant nation. She is an eternal student of the natural world and generously shares with others how to strengthen their personal relationship with the plants around them and find their passion for embracing conscious earth stewardship. She offers regular Appalachian Tea Ceremonies, Plant Walks, and other earth-based workshops and is the author of a weekly subscription newsletter called Earth Devotions.

I’m thrilled to share our conversation with you today!

-- TIMESTAMPS --

• 01:10 - Introduction to Mary Morgaine Squire
• 03:58 - How Mary found her herbal path
• 16:55 - Herb Mountain Farm
• 20:58 - A Gingko meditation
• 24:40 - Gingko biloba benefits
  
• 30:27 - Sweet Memory Tea
• 35:19 - Closing thoughts about gingko
• 37:30 - Mary’s current projects
• 40:35 - What Mary keeps in her herbal first aid kit
• 47:35 - Herbal tidbit

Get Your Free Recipe!

Gingko brings the herbs together in this gentle tea recipe to help support clear recall.

Ingredients:

• 2 Tbsp Ginkgo 
• 3 Tbsp Nettle 
• 1 Tbsp Rosemary 
• 1 Tbsp Lemon Balm
• 1 Tbsp Jiaogulon

Directions:

1. Measure out and set aside the dried herbs. 
2. Bring 1 quart water to boil. Remove from stove top. Add the Sweet Memory Tea mixture to the hot water and immediately cover with lid. 
3. Let steep for 20 minutes. 
4. Strain and serve. Add honey if you'd like!

Connect with Mary Morgaine

• Website | Mary Plantwalker
• Instagram | @maryplantwalker
• Substack | Earth Devotions

Transcript of the 'Gingko biloba Benefits with Mary Morgaine Squire' Video

Rosalee de la Forêt:
Hello and welcome to the Herbs with Rosalee Podcast, a show exploring how herbs heal as
medicine, as food and through nature connection. I’m your host, Rosalee de la Forêt. I created
this Channel to share trusted herbal wisdom so that you can get the best results when
relying on herbs for your health. I love offering up practical knowledge to help you dive deeper
into the world of medicinal plants and seasonal living.

Each episode of the Herbs with Rosalee Podcast is shared on YouTube, as well as your favorite
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Rosalee de la Forêt:

Okay, grab your cup of tea and let’s dive in.

When I sat down to interview Mary, I had no idea her herbal roots grew so deeply. All I knew is that I had fallen in love with her plant newsletters, which are really just love letters within themselves. I’m really excited that she chose gingko for her herb. It’s a new plant for the show and I enjoyed learning more about it myself. In fact, now, I really want to grow a gingko tree in my yard, just looking for the perfect spot.

For those of you who don’t already know her, Mary Morgaine Squire, a.k.a. Mary Plantwalker, is a land steward, writer, educator, ceremonialist and avid gardener living in the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina. She began her walk with the plants at Fairhaven College in the early ‘90s, while earning a B.A. in Sustainable Living, and later, traveled the world to learn about the plants and healers of indigenous cultures. Matthew Wood, Frank Cook and Juliet Blankespoor have been some of her many herbal teachers along the way.

As a plantfolk woman, Mary Morgaine walks her talk by steeping herself daily in the spirit of the plants whether it’s eating something wild, drinking herbal tea, sitting under a tree or giving voice to the plant nation. She offers regular Appalachian tea ceremonies, plant walks and other earth-based workshops, and is the author of a weekly subscription newsletter called Earth Devotions. 

Welcome to the podcast, Mary.

Mary Morgaine Squire:

Thank you. Thank you. I’m so honored to be here. I’m just really thrilled. I’ve listened to so many of these podcasts and I’m like, “Oh, you’re going to ask me some things? Wow! How did I get into this group of amazing people?” So, I feel really blessed and fortunate to follow in the footsteps of the work that you’re doing and the people that you’ve already spoken to. It’s a real honor, so thank you.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

That is so sweet, Mary. I didn’t know you were a listener, so that’s wonderful to hear. Actually, today, I was out on my walk and I was like, “How did I first hear about Mary?” and I couldn’t remember if somebody have recommended you perhaps or if I had seen you through Instagram. Awhile ago, six months or so, I signed up for your newsletter. I’ve been getting your newsletters and reading them, and absolutely loving them. Your writing is so lovely. Your Plant Devotion section where… speaking through the plants and everything is just so lovely. I just like to hear your stories and everything. The “garlic ring” story stands out.

Mary Morgaine Squire:

[Crosstalk] Thank you.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

That’s a wonderful one, so I’m really excited to have you on. I think a lot of people will enjoy reading your weekly newsletters, so I highly recommend them. As always, we love to start with hearing your story and the ways in which the plants have brought you into this herbal worlds. I’d love to hear that from you, Mary. 

Mary Morgaine Squire:

When I think about my walk with the plants, there’s no one entry that is like, “That was it!” I think it’s like that for a lot of people. It’s like a circle or a spiral. I grew up in a lot of nature. I’m in natural environments, so I feel very fortunate that way that I got to be around plants, animals, fresh water, trees and things like this. When I went away to college, I went to Fairhaven College in Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington. There was a community garden at the Fairhaven College and I jumped right in. It was my first time gardening. I just got so excited about it and I thought that everything had to be planned out perfectly before you could even plant a seed. I was making all these grafts of everything, the timing, where they would be, what they would need and all that stuff. I actually never got to growing anything. It was just all in my head. I knew that I wanted to do this and I found myself wandering a lot of the woods that were nearby. Have you been to Bellingham, Washington? Are you near Bellingham?

Rosalee de la Forêt: 

I am. I’m just about three hours, but I’m east so I’m in a totally different environment.

Mary Morgaine Squire:

Right. Yes, the west all moist and the east dry. There are all these trails near Bellingham, so I started really exploring them. There was this one place called “Sehome Hill” near the college. I wonder what it’s like now. I haven’t been back in a long time. I would go up in there to get away from my heady studies because it’s very much in my head. It was the first time I ever met nettles on accident. So many people have nettles as their gateway plant in a way. I was stung as I walked through a huge patch. I heard these plants talking to me saying, “Ah, you didn’t think I could sting, did you? Aha, you thought only ants could do that. Nope. Plants can do these things too. If you take me home, you can eat me.” I found myself gathering these nettles without really any human guidance or anything, bringing it home and making my first wild food. From there, it just kind of like—the domino effect. I became friends with wildcrafters accidentally, serendipitously, however you want to think of it.

I also had severe asthma as a child, as a teenager and in college. I was just burnt out on my inhaler and nebulizer. I was spending in the fall every year in the hospital on an oxygen tent. It was very severe. I just thought there has to be a cure. It can’t just be this something to hold me up. I have to find this cure. I met a wildcrafting friend who said, “Have you ever tried Lomatium dissectum for your asthma?” I was like, “What is that?” He took me out and we went east over toward where you are. We dug some root. We made tea. We made tincture and it was phenomenal. It was my first experience in my whole life of not having to use an inhaler to be able to breathe. Just hooked. What can you say when you find a plant medicine like that?

I met Michael Pilarski, “Skeeter.” He lived in Bellingham. He is the friend of the trees and an amazing teacher. He was my mentor and I interned with him in 1993. He taught me about how to ethically harvest things for the next seven generations. It made so much sense, but this is not how I was raised. I wasn’t raised—there just wasn’t these things spoken aloud, I guess. It was really profound for me.

From there, it just kept going. I was still in college this whole time. We did a project, 11 of us, called “Village Design,” where we went to Lopez Island on one of our friends’ parents’ land in the San Juan Islands, and went back to the land where we weren’t going to do anything but live off the land. Everything--our medicine, our food. Everything. Well, we didn’t know what we were doing. We got so desperate, we ate banana slugs. Let’s just say how bad it was, but we did learn a lot about plants. We lived under the stars and in the open for months. You can only imagine what you’re learning from watching the trees and the plants growing and feeling all of these things around you.

That was a big, big part of my plant path and then I moved back to the east. I’m from the south. I’m in South Carolina. I moved back to the East Coast and I lived in New York. I came across this blue cohosh patch one day. I didn’t know it was blue cohosh patch at the time. It was a huge patch.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Wow.

Mary Morgaine Squire:

It was gorgeous. It had this blue hue to it and a light was just filtering in. It was just after a rainstorm and it was all in flower. I just knew in that moment I am a plant person. This is what I have to do and be in my life, so I looked up a teacher to study. I checked out a bunch of them, but I ended up studying with Matthew Wood and Dina Falconi. She helped set up a course and it was wonderful. He was such a great teacher. I learned so much. I spent a year studying with him. From there, most of my teachers have been local teachers that I’ve met along my path and a lot of my teachers don’t have—they’re not—nobody knows them. They’re people who—some of them can’t even read or write. They are so embedded in the knowledge of the land and the plants that they just pass it on orally. Then I met Frank Cook. Have you ever heard of Frank Cook? He was-

Rosalee de la Forêt: 

I have and I was actually wondering if you would say a little bit about Frank because I don’t a lot of people have heard of Frank Cook. He has such an interesting presence, still, in the herbal world even though he has passed on some years ago now. So, I’m wondering if you would say some things about Frank.

Mary Morgaine Squire:

Okay. I’d love to share about Frank and keep him alive because he passed away quite early at a young age unexpectedly in 2009. He was an ethnobotanical explorer that would travel around the world to meet the indigenous healers and what plants that they were utilizing in their practice. Then also, coming back to wherever he was in the States. He traveled all over the States. He had connections with all these people in the States what plants were analog plants to those plants, so that we don’t have to go trying to take plants from other people’s culture and think that that’s going to be the cure for us if we can grow this here ourselves. That was one of his passions, but also just recording and learning what all this knowledge was that is being lost and or not shared or passed on, just keeping it alive. We traveled all over the world together over the years to Africa, to Australia, Central America and Europe studying plant medicine. I learned so much from him.

The way that he approached plants was the way that I had been approaching them, but I hadn’t really encountered a lot of people doing this. Whereas these alive, green beings, we would be with them as you and I would have a conversation, or as a human just talking with them, showing a lot of respect, reciprocity, friendship and growing with them as allies. That was a lot of what he taught – eat something wild everyday. I try to keep a lot of what he taught alive and being passed on, sowing the seeds that he planted in me.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

It seems like he must have been quite the personality because he left quite his mark on people who studied with him, like Mark Williams. He has really left an imprint that people have really been dedicated to keeping his spirit alive and sharing his teachings.

Mary Morgaine Squire:

Yes. He had an iconic persona. He’s very charismatic, very gentle, beautiful, loving being the way that he kept hold groups. I wonder what it would be like for him now. He left before social media came. He didn’t have a phone and he couldn’t stand any of that stuff. I wonder where he would be plugging in or how that would look for him now. To do this day—just yesterday I ran into somebody and we were talking. He was like, “You were Frank’s partner? Let me tell you about Frank Cook.” Wherever I go, I’m like, “What? You know him? He affected you?” It just amazes me. He was so, so, like you said, alive in people’s hearts and have pointed them on their path, supported them on their path, including mine, greatly.

I can’t mention my walk with the plants without mentioning my husband, Hart, who I came to work for in 2004 or 2005 on his farm, which is where I live now, Herb Mountain Farm. The way that he taught me how to consciously steward a piece of land and work with the harmonious relationship between different plants that we want to eat, a lot of food plants, food trees and perennials—he’s my greatest mentor in the plant world. That’s some of my plant story. 

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Thank you so much for sharing that. Thanks for sharing about Frank. I’m surprised to hear about Skeeter just because I think of you as being more East Coast and Skeeter is my neck of the woods. That’s fun. I really need to have him on the show. He’s quite the character himself and someone I can [crosstalk].

Mary Morgaine Squire:

He is such the character. I wonder if you would even remember me. I went by Mary Belton when I was in college. I changed my name to Mary Morgaine in my early twenties, so he might not even know who I am if you mention me.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I see him often.

Mary Morgaine Squire:

He was very influential for me. I just loved, loved working for him. I consider myself a plant folk woman. I’m not a clinical herbalist. I’m very intuitive and just like, “Let’s do a little bit of this, have this and pull it together,” or something will just come out of my mouth and I have no idea what’s the basis for it. Somebody looks it up, it’s there. I just think of myself as a green woman or a plant folk woman more than an herbalist, but I don’t know why. What really matters the difference? I love herbs. I can’t imagine not having herbs in my life every single day, very much a part of my life.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I’d love to hear a little bit about Herb Mountain Farm and what you’re doing there. It just sounds so lovely and a wonderful resource for people in terms of your offerings. I know from your newsletter, you recently had a plant sale, but it seems like you have other things going on too for people who are plant lovers.

Mary Morgaine Squire:

I live on a botanical sanctuary, part of the United Plant Savers Botanical Sanctuary network. We have a 138 acres in the Appalachian Mountains. Most of them are in a conservation easement, just protected, the woods and the waters. We have our own watershed that flows down, so it feels really sacred and special to protect that water flow that flows here and to the creek out front, which flows to the French Broad River, which is the oldest river in the world. We have a lot of buildings here because my husband can’t stop doing things, so he builds things. They were first family and since some of those families passed, others have moved away, so we have tenants that lived in them. We kind of have this unintentional residential community that is really fun and special. We all have our own things going on, but we all have each other’s back. Occasionally, we’ll have events together, things. We have a really beautiful school here, like a Waldorf-based outdoor forest children’s program for elementary. We have kids here everyday. It’s such a beautiful gift, wonderful thing happening.

We have events here. Some people like Mark, does this lovely plant walks here. That’s a lot of people will do. I host Appalachian tea ceremonies, plantwalks and earth communion workshops. Just so many various things over the years because there’s just a space for it. My husband, Hart, and I, love planting and tending plants, so we need somebody come admire them. We do have this passion of increasing diversity here. A plant can grow here, let’s try it out! So, that’s some about the farm. 

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Just looking behind you, just all that greenness behind the windows and stuff, I just get this sense of this incredibly lush place with botanical diversity. It sounds really lovely.

Mary Morgaine Squire:

It is quite lush, especially this year we’ve had an ample amount of rain in May. It’s just been a real blessing. Things grow so fast here when they grow. It’s like weeding. You can’t keep up.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I read you’re in Zone 6. I’m in Zone 4, but I have that same feeling of May, it’s just this incredible amount of growth. You can just practically watch the plants grow before your eyes leading up to solstice. It’s just amazing. It’s a busy season to be sure.

Mary Morgaine Squire:

It gives me so much hope every year no matter what hardships have happened over the winter or what hard things are happening in the world. When this time of year rolls around, I just feel the fecundity of Mother Earth and feel so much hopefulness for our planet and all the species. The potential.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Thank you for that. You have chosen an herb that—I don’t know if you know this, but it’s the first time it’s on the podcast.

Mary Morgaine Squire:

Oh, gosh! I will freaking do it justice. It’s such a sacred one.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

It’s not a plant that I work with a lot myself, so I’m excited to hear what you have to share about Gingko biloba benefits.

Mary Morgaine Squire:

Okay. I’m excited to talk about Gingko biloba benefits. What do you think about a starting and just doing a little brief plant meditation with gingko before we talk about it?

Rosalee de la Forêt:

That sounds lovely. Yes, let’s do that.

Mary Morgaine Squire:

Okay. Alright. Let’s see. I’ll just invite you and our listeners to softly close your eyes and just conjure up an image of either a gingko tree that you know, that you have a personal relationship with, or that you know one in your town where it is that you admire that have seen. If not, just the tree itself; any pictures that you’ve seen, just what you know of the gingko tree. Just call that image up in your mind. Imagine yourself just sitting under that tree, just sitting down under the tree, nice soft grass underneath. You just lean your back against the wide trunk of the tree for support, just taking a deep exhale as you lean against the tree. Listening to what the gingko tree wants to tell you. Not trying to get too heady or too many judgments, just what would the gingko tree say to you. What do you hear? Then let’s just slowly open our eyes. I’d love to hear if anything came to you, if you heard any words from the gingko. If you didn’t that’s okay. I’m just so curious.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I immediately loved just thinking of the gingko. They don’t grow near me, but I recently spent time with two gingkos growing together in Lucca, Italy at a botanical garden there. I was glad I had something to rest on and rest-

Mary Morgaine Squire:

You have to go back to Italy!

Rosalee de la Forêt:

There are these big, beautiful trees. In fact, I think I took pictures. I’ll put those on the screen for those people who are watching the video. The word that came to me or the sense—I had two sense of things that come to me. One was rest and perhaps that was because I was really feeling that rest of the gingko tree holding me. The other thing that came to me was just this sense of wisdom, like “rest and wait for the wisdom.” That’s what came to me. 

Mary Morgaine Squire:

Beautiful, beautiful. I have this gingko tree right outside of our front door. I wrote a love letter to gingko a little while back. I’m just going to read a couple of sentences of what I wrote that the gingko shared with me from this love letter. I say, “I stand beneath your branches and listen. I hear things. Are you whispering to me? I hear ‘This too shall pass.’ I hear, ‘Don’t sweat the small stuff.’ I hear, ‘Don’t give up. Stand tall. Make beauty.” I hear, ‘Remember who you are.’”

I think that the gingko tree is so much about helping us remember who we are and what we need at that moment, whether it be rest or words of wisdom or encouragements – all of these things. It’s like the biggest grandfather, grandmother we have on this planet. It’s a living fossil. It’s been around for over 200 million years. It’s hard to hook our little minds around that whatever that kind of number would mean.

It’s in a family all on its own. That’s the only surviving member of this family, the Ginkgo biloba, the Latin name. I always love to look up on the Latin name because it will often tell us a lot more about the plant. In this case, biloba, means “tri leaves.” I brought a piece of gingko in from my tree, our tree out here. It’s funny because biloba is double—biloba not dry leaves, two leaves. Biloba means “two loaves,” but a lot of times the leaves will just be fans and not two loaves. Sometimes—well, this one doesn’t even have the biloba. That’s what you get with the Latin name, but they are bilobas. They say that the doctrine of signatures are those are the two hemispheres of the brain. They also look like a heart.

Probably, if anybody has had any engagement with gingko as medicine, the first thing that comes to their mind is for memory, for helping sharpen your mentality, increase your learning capacity. That’s one of its biggest gifts is and what it’s most famous for. Even if you don’t even really know it that much, you probably have that knowledge in your mind. I think it just seems ironic that this tree that is the oldest tree on the planet is helping us remember. I think that it has the capacity and the longing to want us to remember earth’s story. I love to drink the tree tea, the leaves of the tree just to try and remember beyond my little life, beyond the past 500 years what you have seen as a species. It’s just mindboggling, but also really humbling and helpful because it teaches resilience and the capacity to just stand strong and adapt to many, many changes which we are being asked to do in these times.

The tree itself can grow in a really hot place. It can’t grow in subtropical, but it can grow in a really hot place. It can grow in incredibly cold zones. The zone range that this tree can grow in and the amount of water that it can take or the lack of water that it can take is really extraordinary for a tree. There are not a whole bunch of trees that can take such a wide range of things. It’s even said that there are some gingko trees near Hiroshima that were bombed and started sending out buds a month later or something. This tree is like magic!

They’re so easy to grow. All you need is a little nut. You put it in a pot and you can grow a tree. They’ gorgeous and they last—they live for over a thousand years. Imagine planting something that you’re leaving for your descendants for over a thousand years that that tree will see. Like the tree that’s right outside of our front door, Hart planted it in the ‘90s, so it’s 30-something years old and it’s already 60 feet tall? It’s huge! The tree grows as wide as it does tall. I think it takes a couple of hundred years for it to get to its full growth. It’s a very, very big tree. It’s so stunning. These leaves are like art in and of itself. The fans that they make, I always think if I had a lot of time on my hands and I could get away with this, I will take all the gingko leaves when they fall and saw them all together to make a fresh leaf dress. Wouldn’t that be beautiful?

Rosalee de la Forêt:

That would be so beautiful.

Mary Morgaine Squire:

You can make these butterflies out of these leaves that we were seeing the way people make butterflies and then set them on their altar or to decorate or little baskets. You can do fun things. Of course, they’re easy to press to make cards out of. All these beauty, it’s like beauty bang. Gosh, what else? I want to say there are so many things. It’s also called the “maidenhair tree” because the leaves look like ferns. I’m drinking some gingko. I’m drinking my sweet memory tea right now, so I can hopefully remember what I want to say.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Let’s talk about that recipe a bit because this looks like a beautiful recipe, your sweet memory tea. You have several herbs in there, one of which I think might be new to folks so I was hoping you’d talk a bit about that too.

Mary Morgaine Squire:

In this sweet memory tea, I have some gingko, of course, gingko leaves. I just want to pause and say that in general, I use the gingko leaves when they’re yellow because the gingko tree will give all of its leaves. When it’s just starting to turn yellow, they’ll drop all of them within hours. It sounds like snow coming down. It’s a complete meditation. We have people in the neighborhood, in the community who say, “Call me as soon as the gingko starts to shed its leaves,” because they want to come sit under it and cry or be still or whatever. It’s so powerful if you’ve ever seen a gingko tree the way that it sheds its leaves within hours. 

But why climb a hundred-foot tree and harvest leaves when you can wait for the tree to give you all the leaves itself when there’s just as much medicine in those leaves too. That’s why I usually use the yellow leaves. Sometimes I’ll go cut a branch that’s hanging really low to get the fresh green ones and make a little bit of fresh tea, especially when I’ve used up all my leaves from last year, which I just did. This has gingko leaves. It has Jiaogulan. I talked about Jiaogulan-

Rosalee de la Forêt:

That’s the one I was thinking folks will want to hear about.

Mary Morgaine Squire:

Do you see that green patch in the window there? That’s Jiaogulan. Jiaogulan goes crazy here and I warn anyone if you want to plant Jiaogulan, to be very cautious with it because I regret planting it so badly. It has just taken over, but it is an amazing plant. It is an amazing plant, but it’s very, very aggressive here. It’s in the cucumber family and one of the names of it is “poor person’s ginseng” because it has a lot of the similar qualities that ginseng has, but it can grow really easy and harvest tons of it in a season. It’s a viny, palmate, shiny green-leafed herb that has a very sweet aftertaste, but kind of tastes bitter at first. At least, I can get this… It’s sometimes called “sweet tea vine,” but this version, not so much. It’s wonderful for helping you remember things. It’s wonderful for longevity. It’s an adaptogen for vitality. All these things that ginseng are. 

I love combining it with gingko and using it any chance that I can because we have a million leaves of it. I keep waiting for somebody to call me up and say, “I need to harvest all of your Jiaogulan.” I’m like, “Thank you. That’s great.” Then rosemary who has been used for centuries to help keep our minds clear and to recall the things that we’re wanting to keep fresh in the front of our minds. Nettles partly because I put nettles in everything. It’s just such a good base for a tea. It just grounds everything out. It melds all the taste together. Plus, it’s full of so many nutrients and minerals that we are often lacking that is keeping us from—we’re getting brain fog because we’re just not getting these minerals that we need. I’ve added nettles and lemon balm. Lemon balm is part of why I call it the sweet memory tea because I think that the lemon balm just helps us see life with a much brighter filter. Things feel a lot happier and more joyful when we bring lemon balm into our lives. That’s the sweet memory tea that I’m drinking. Cheers!

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Cheers! It’s lovely.

For everyone who’d like a copy of their beautifully illustrated sweet memory tea recipe card, we’ll have those available for you in above this transcript.

Mary Morgaine Squire:

I love your recipe cards, by the way.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Big kudos to Tatiana.

Mary Morgaine Squire:

They’re so pretty. I do want to share that the gingko tree is originally from China. It’s extinct in the wild and has been kept alive through various cultivation that it was called “yingo,” which means “silver fruit.” We somehow got yingo. We got gingko. You know the game of telephone. From China to here, you see how maybe that can get mixed up or something. The fruit of the female tree is a super food that I don’t have a lot of experience with, so I can’t really speak to that, but I just wanted to talk about how that name came from and also, just to say that the gingko is wonderful for improving circulation, so any kind of poor circulation issues that you have. In effect, it’s also a cardiovascular supportive herb too, so I like to add it to cardiovascular formulas with hawthorn, rose, mugwort, cayenne and things like that because it helps enhance the qualities that they’re already giving to you. What else? It helps with the free radicals that are in our bodies, so it’s an antioxidant, which helps with the slowing of the aging and the memory recall among other things. Thank you, gingko.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Right now, I’m wondering where I could put a gingko tree in my yard. Can I grow in Zone 4? These are the thoughts in my head. I’m excited to have this beautiful tree.

Mary Morgaine Squire:

If there’s a community space that you know of nearby that a gingko could be planted. When Frank died, we planted a gingko tree at a big community space. He died in 2009 and that gingko tree is big already! They grow pretty fast.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Lovely. 

Mary Morgaine Squire:

So many people have enjoyed that gingko tree. [Crosstalk] gingko tree in there.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Wonderful. Thank you for sharing so much of your love for gingko. I really appreciate that and I’m looking forward to trying the tea as well. I’d love to hear about any projects or things you’d like to share that you have going on right now.

Mary Morgaine Squire:

I always got projects going. Something that I’m really passionate about right now is the newsletter that you mentioned. I have a weekly newsletter called Earth Devotions. In this newsletter, I write plant love letters. Sometimes I write love letters to plants and sometimes the plants write a love letter to us. Also, I write about—usually it’s based on the time of year or what’s happening in the world or just how it is being human, especially from a green slant. I love writing. I want to share more of my writing with the world and I found the platform of Substack and was like, “This is a way I can do that,” so I have this weekly newsletter paid or free subscription. Through this newsletter, I am also accumulating a lot of these letters to eventually turn into a plant love letter book, so one day I have that to show to you.

Rosalee de la Forêt: 

How lovely.

Mary Morgaine Squire:

Plant grafts. I love being able to make images that can help—I love to collage and help people learn plant families or groupings. I’m working on plant grafts right now, called “holy holy.” These are the plants that we can do sacred work with. Just to give you an image with the plants, those are projects that I’m really passionate about. I’m always passionate about growing things, have some new Chrysanthemum morifolium, some Bo-ju-hua to put in the ground. I’m excited about to grow that.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I don’t know.

Mary Morgaine Squire:

You should grow that because it blooms around Samhain. Probably even where you are, it will bloom the same time where you can make this fresh, amazing chrysanthemum tea that’s medicinal when nothing else is blooming.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

That’s lovely. Our first frost is late September, so we don’t really get a lot.

Mary Morgaine Squire:

It will freeze here.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Oh, wow!

Mary Morgaine Squire:

Your first frost can be as early as October 2nd. We’ve had heavy frosts and then it’s very cold hardy. It‘s from the high regions of China.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Interesting.

Mary Morgaine Squire:

I wonder. It might do there. The one that I have is Zone 4 to Zone 9 or something.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I’ll look into that. I highly recommend your newsletter. As I’ve already said, I really enjoy it myself. People like to be connected to the plants, which I assume they do by listening to this podcast, I highly recommend your newsletter. For your final question today, the question is a fan favorite. This is one of our favorite questions we ask and that is, what is in your medicinal first aid kit?

Mary Morgaine Squire:

I love that question because I don’t have anything in my first aid kit that isn’t herbal except for Band-Aid and stuff. My first aid kit is right outside the door, but if we’re traveling or doing something that we need to have some stuff stocked, by far, my No. 1 plant is yarrow. Yarrow leaves dried and some powdered for injury and styptic for stopping bleeding, 100% definitely. I always have a salve. Always have a good comfrey-plantain salve in there. Lavender oil and oregano oil because they’re just the best for all the microbes, anything you’re not wanting. The antibacterial, antifungal, antiviral, all these things. I keep yellow root. That’s like my antibiotic. When I went to Africa, my stash was my yellow root. Yellow root is native to these parts. It has a lot of berberine in it, so I would say Oregon grape fruit would be your equivalent with working that. I keep it as a tea-

Rosalee de la Forêt:

What is the botanical name of yellow root?

Mary Morgaine Squire:

Xanthorhiza simplicissima. I think that’s it, xanthorhiza simplicissima. The dried root as tincture. I just took it everyday as I travel just because it’s in Africa and I didn’t know what kind of things I was going to be subjected to in my system, but I stayed well that whole time. I also have a big aloe leaf that I’ll carry if I’m traveling in my first aid kit for burns, to prevent burns, for sunburn. Another thing in Africa is my only sunscreen was aloe leaf. I just piled it on me. It also repels mosquitoes.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Wow.

Mary Morgaine Squire:

It’s really deeply yellow, so it’s kind of unattractive. You get a little-

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I was wondering what that would be like to have all that yellow gel all over you.

Mary Morgaine Squire:

But I don’t care. I don’t want to get burn and I don’t want to get malaria. Those are some of the things that would be in my—there’s more, but that would be some.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

That’s fascinating core staples there. Right now, it’s the aloe plant that’s blowing my mind. I think that’s really cool--sunscreen, bug repellant. Interesting.

Mary Morgaine Squire:

Aloe vera--we could talk about that for a long time. All the various species of aloe--there are so many species, especially in Africa. What an incredible plant. When we were in Africa, there was abundance of aloes. I will cut these little chunks to give. There were several of us. Everyday, I say, “You got to eat this today, so your blood will be bitter and you won’t get malaria.” There was one person in our group who would not eat it because it does taste pretty bad, I have to say, and he got malaria and no one else did. I don’t know what, but I have to say we were all subjected to the same things, so I really believe in that medicine for helping with that preventatively.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

It can be a laxative when you take it in that whole form. Or were you not taking enough of it to-

Mary Morgaine Squire:

We would just take a chunk, a little square inch part, so it wasn’t enough to be laxative. It could be if you took a bunch of it. You need to use it that way.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Interesting. It’s fascinating. Thanks for sharing that, Mary. Thank you so much for being on the show. It’s been so lovely to meet you in person and to hear about your love of gingko. Thank you so much. I look forward to your future writings and your weekly newsletter. Again, I highly recommend everyone to join me in reading it.

Mary Morgaine Squire:

Thank you. It’s been fun to be here. Thank you so much for the opportunity. Look forward to seeing who else you keep having on the show down the road.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Thank you, Mary. Thank you so much.

As always, thank you for being here and don’t forget to download your beautifully illustrated recipe card above the transcript of this show. Also, sign up for my weekly newsletter, which is the best way to stay in touch with me. You can find more of Mary’s work at maryplantwalker.com. If you’d like more herbal episodes to head your way, then one of the best ways to support this podcast is by subscribing on YouTube or your favorite podcast app.

I deeply believe that this world needs more herbalists and plant-centered folks and I’m so glad that you’re here as part of this herbal community. Also, a big round of thanks to the people all over the world who make this podcast happen week to week:

Nicole Paull is the Project Manager who oversees the whole operation from guest outreach, to writing show notes, to actually uploading each episode and so many other things I don’t even know. She really holds this whole thing together.

Francesca is our fabulous video and audio editor. She not only makes listening more pleasant. She also adds beauty to the YouTube videos with plant images and video overlays. Tatiana Rusakova is the botanical illustrator who creates gorgeous plant and recipe illustrations for us. I love them. I know that you do too. Kristy edits the recipe cards and then Jenny creates them as well as the thumbnail images for YouTube. Alex is our tech support and social media manager. And Karin and Emilie are our Student Services Coordinators and Community Support. For those of you who like to read along, Jennifer is who creates the transcripts each week. Xavier, my handsome French husband, is the cameraman and website IT guy. It takes an herbal village to make it all happen, including you.

One of my favorite things about this podcast is hearing from you. I read every comment that comes in and I’m excited to hear your herbal thoughts on Gingko biloba benefits.

Okay. You’ve lasted to the very end of the show which means you get your very own gold star and this herbal tidbit:

After listening to Mary speak about gingko, I was excited to learn more about this tree. I went down this rabbit hole of information in PubMed research journals and thought I could share some of the interesting tidbits I found along the way.

For one, gingko is a very popular herb. I had no idea. There are about 50 million Ginkgo biloba trees grown primarily in China, France and the US in South Carolina. These trees produce over 8,000 tons of dried leaves each year. In Europe and in the USA, the leaf extract is one of the top five selling herbal supplements, which is estimated to be around half a billion US dollars in sales. It’s interesting how long this plant can live, but it doesn’t reach maturity until 20 to 30 years of age. The oldest gingko trees are found growing near Daoist and Buddhist temples with some trees being over 1,500 years old. I found numerous studies talking about how the best time to harvest gingko leaves are in the fall when they’ve started to turn color.

Again, I’m excited to hear your thoughts on gingko and as always, thanks for being here.