Jiaogulan's Teachings

"Control is an illusion."

Hello friends, thank you for sticking with me during this irregular time of posting. I will venture to say that my life has never been this full. Finding time to write while maintaining my other jobs of property manager, landscaper and plant teacher is inherently challenging but especially during the growing season! And added on top of this, we are transforming a rental into a women’s sanctuary and gathering space. It is a relief to have now arrived at Lammas, the time on the Wheel of the Year where the exhale begins. Aahhhhhh.
I did have a beautiful window this week during a rainstorm to appreciate and reflect upon Jiaogulan, and now I’d love to share that with you.

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~Plant Love Letters~

Jiaogulan
Gynostemma pentaphyllum
Cucurbitaceae

Jiaogulan is happy here, crawling onto the deck and ready to come on in the house!

Mary Plantwalker reading Love Letter to Jiaogulan

Dear Jiaogulan, 

When the sticky heat of a humid Appalachian summer causes me to move in slow motion, you crawl rapidly in every direction, seemingly unaffected by anything but a hard freeze. And even then, it is just a pause, your roots patiently awaiting underground until the climate warms again, and you can grow, Grow and GROW. I had no idea what you are capable of or I would never have planted you here. In our backyard. Where you have taken Over.

I have a little self-serve plant stand where I sell divisions of plants from our garden like Ostrich Ferns, Sweetgrass, Elderberry, Comfrey, Rudbeckia and many more. And even though these plants can spread in their own right, I find them manageable. But you? Completely uncontrollable, and I would not dare pass you on you to anyone unless they took an oath to keep you inside.

In 2013, Hart and I received a 4 inch pot of you, Jiaogulan, that came from the garden of the late Joe Hollis in Celo, NC. We thought you had died after planting you, thus we planted another 4 inch pot. We thought that died too, and we said, “Oh, well, we tried.” But then the next year, you grew a bit. “Oh good!” we said, “you made it!” Then the next year you grew some more and then, suddenly, you covered the entire back yard! 

Then, despite my pleading, Hart took some of you and transplanted it down at the parking entrance to our property. So you have gone mad there, too. And somehow you have even made it up onto the nature trail, probably from Hart’s use of a track hoe and the spread it has. You, being monoecious, and me never observing any fruits/seeds, points to your root being manually carried up there rather than spread by bird or wind.

As a herbaceous perennial you die back each winter, looking like you have disappeared altogether as your tender leaf decomposes rapidly. But the moment the cold eases up, you sprout again, and each time it’s a wider reach. The previous year, your vines sent down rootlets that have now become sturdy roots, pretty much impossible to pull out because, believe me, we have tried. Two summers ago, we invested I don’t know how many dozens of hours into digging out all of your roots, to eradicate you once and for all. Hahaha!!! A week later, you were sprouting back up. A season later, and you would never even know we did a thing.

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So now I just try to exert some semblance of control by hitting you hard with the weedeater once or twice a season and hand pulling your vines off the trees and bushes and back from the edges of the house, before you crawl under it and plant yourself on the other side. I do this by gingerly rolling you up like a carpet so the baby rootlets can’t ever set. 

What will you be like when we aren’t here to do this minor maintenance? Are you the new kudzu, the vine that ate the south, except the woodland version? You are my first experience of planting something I regret (you and Arundo donax, Houttunyia cordata, and Himalayan Snow Parsley, actually. ) Yes, there are those plants that I wish were not so aggressively here, like bittersweet, multiflora rose, ground ivy and spirea, but I didn’t personally plant them. They rode in on someone else’s dime even though they are being dealt with on mine. Yet, you, Jiaogulan- I invited you here, and encouraged your growth, and now I have done something I cannot stop. Pandora’s box has been opened.

Wait- isn’t the intention of this writing to be a love letter? 

Yes, and I am getting there. 

Jiaogulan, what you have taught me more than any other plant is humbleness. I don’t know what I am doing, and I am also here on the land so briefly, whereas you, my plant kin, may be here for thousands of years. You embody a resistance that I will never know. I reckon that even your intense spread is a gift in the long run, because, after all, you are green, building soil, holding soil, creating habitat, feeding organisms. I have heard tell you are even a survival food.

I can imagine all the activity happening in your healthy patch- the snakes and mice and chipmunks and insects doing their thing, the tossed vegetable matter feeding your roots, the life force of your verdant groundcover.  I am intrigued by how your leaf looks so much like Ginseng, Virginia Creeper and Eleuthero, yet how you can outgrow them.

Being in the Cucumber family, you vine up things with your little soft tendrils which makes you so easy to harvest. One of your names is Sweet Tea Vine, but you definitely don’t taste sweet to me. Apparently, you taste either bitter or sweet, depending on the percentage of medicinal constituents you produce which is determined by your growing environment. And guess what? We have the bitter version of you. However, I do find your aftertaste lingers pleasantly sweet. 

I am quite curious about your use as a sweetener substitute in the folk way you are used in your native habitat of China. I haven’t figured out how to extract that sweetness yet. I had this idea that you would make a brilliant tasting beer- you even grow like hops. So I gave some of your vine to a fella from New Belgium Brewery who made a test batch, but they weren’t sold on it. Not yet anyway. I really think an upcoming brewer is going to discover your gifts and make a fortune, as you are much easier to grow than hops and have more health benefits!

I tried to turn your abundant growth near the parking entrance into a screen for making a campsite on our land, but then I had too many projects going and didn’t maintain it and you ate the site. I have put out to our community to please come and harvest you— free medicine— but so far all of my ideas for how to maximize your copious habit have yielded little. People are paying money for your capsules, tinctures, powders and teas and here we are paying people to try and get rid of you. I have never been a good capitalist. 

Once we collectively catch on to how gifted you are, I think we will have people knocking down our door to get to you. Imagine if that was Ginseng growing all over like that, yet you allegedly have the same qualities! Other names we have given you are Resourceful Person’s Ginseng, Miracle Grass and the Herb of Immortality. 

I harvest you for Hart and he says when he drinks your tea, he feels better. But then I forgot to make tea of you the next week, and the next. How can I forget to call you in every day? I will admit I find you to be more of a male support, so maybe that is why. Thank you for your gift of balancing male hormones and libido.

Being so easy to grow, you are the most readily available and easily accessible adaptogenic there is. Strengthening our immune system by reducing anxiety and stress levels, our energy is boosted by default. You have antioxidants that slow aging and are able to lower blood pressure as well as balance blood sugar levels.

Alan Muskat of No Taste Like Home harvesting from one our Jiaogulan patches.

And thank you for working in conjunction with those undergoing chemotherapy and/or radiation to restore a stressed system and rebuild strength. Thank you for all the many gifts you have that I do not even know to name.

When I am weeding you, I can’t help but think of Joe Hollis’s words when he saw how happy you are here: “You have an endless supply of medicine. Don’t weed, harvest and use it!”

With warm regards, truly,
Mary Plantwalker

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Weaving Community~

~Video of Joe Hollis of Mountain Gardens in Celo, NC sharing about Jiaogulan.

~My dear friend Muse is on her way from Brazil and will be the first one to initiate our new sanctuary space, Lilac Cottage, by retreating there and offering treatments through her work Medicine of the Feminine. Muse describes herself as a wanderer of the wilds, creatrix, and medicine woman — a.k.a. acupuncturist, vagina whisperer, bodyworker + herbalist. We are so excited to host you, Muse!