the neighborhood herbal, episode 2: c is for cleavers and corona feels
Straining cleavers’ juice to make a succus (a preserved juice with alcohol). Don’t the remaining fibers look like a scoop of green sorbet?!
c is for cleavers
today we’ll be talking about cleavers! they’re a magnificent springtime herb, alongside violets and chickweed, which pop up in your neighborhood to tell you that warmer but not-quite-yet-shorts weather is here to greet you. and if you’re in durham, hello offensively cold spring!
cleavers stick to you. literally, throw yourself in a pile of weeds and whichever one sticks is cleavers. they also have little “butt” looking seeds on them - which adé informed me can be dried, roasted and ground into a coffee substitute. much respect to the patient hands which discovered that beverages are possible from seeds and beans. like seriously.
as i started to see the cleavers around my yard go to seed, my procrastinating herbalist self realized i wanted to make some good medicine to share before it’s too late. as i’ve mentioned, herbalism is all about living with the seasons and harnessing plant medicine at the right time and place. but, you know, a girl is on corona time right now. which is simultaneously really rapid in some ways (work, organizing, meeting basic needs) and slow and foggy in others (responding to emails, trying to re-pot that one dying plant, tending to your personal blog).
why cleavers are your frem
cleavers are like a green juice for your urinary tract (pee area + bladder + kidneys) and lymph glands (organs that carry fluid containing white blood cells, which help you fight off infections).
earlier this year i had a terrible UTI - which i treated with antibiotics - and it was definitelyyyy the result of intense stress. since then, most of us have been under some level of stress and anxiety, if not from being directly impacted by COVID-19, then because much of the way we were accustomed to living life has forever changed. since pandemic, the UTI i thought i’d recovered from came back. i also started hearing from others that their junk just didn’t feel right lately either. cleavers, as i was taught by other herbalists, is a diuretic - meaning it helps us pee. and that’s super helpful if we’re trying to pee out an infection, having trouble peeing, or needing to flush out toxins through our pee. believe me when i say i will be taking my teaspoon / per day of cleavers to nourish my junk from the stress of the plague.
cleavers are a cooling herb! it cools by treating the places where there is stagnant “heat.” think of the redness of a swollen lymph node when you have a cold. i haven’t used cleavers for lymph support, but you can read more about that here.
cleaver preparations
y’all enjoy my videos? we made two things with our neighborhood cleavers: ice cubes and a succus (a preserved herbal juice).
here’s the recipe i followed for both. the brief version is:
harvest fresh cleavers
chop up using kitchen scissors
blend + add cold water as needed to help smooth it out
strain the cleaver pulp from the juice using a strainer
pour the cleavers’ juice into ice cube trays and freeze. throw it in your smoothie for later!
AND / OR
add 1 part alcohol to 3 parts cleavers’ juice. (i used brandy bc it’s all i had - use what you have that makes sense - the alcohol is what makes the succus shelf-stable.)
put in a clean jar and shake. take 1 TSP or 1 dropperful at a time - keeps for approx. 1 year on the shelf
cleavers = THE PEOPLE’S MEDICINE. it is abundant on trails and likely in the weedier or overgrown parts of your neighborhood. try to harvest away from the street if possible. luckily, the car traffic is less these days - perhaps there’s some fortune in that for those of us harvesting on the roadside where a lot of amazing herbs tend to grow. i walked karuna in a wealthier neighborhood today and barely saw any cleavers. like dandelions, chickweed, plantain, and violets - these herbs are often uprooted because they are weeds. yet now we see dandelion leaves sold by the bundle in grocery stores because people realized these everyday weeds have real magic powers. it’s the same deal with cleavers.
if you’re local, try these coordinates @ the ellerbee creek trail for a spring cleavers’ harvest: 36.030701, -78.903299
hope you enjoyed this week’s dose of the neighborhood herbal!
xo sumi
