A friend of mine is looking for samples of fresh black walnut leaves and black cohosh (Cimicifuga racemosa) leaves for a study. You must be absolutely positive on the ID of the plant and be able to provide a picture of the plant when it was actively growing (just in case questions come up). The samples must be at least 50km from Guelph, ON. In exchange I can offer pregnant onion bulbils (Albuca bracteata syn. Ornithogalum caudatum), mother of thousand plantlets (Bryophyllum daigremontianum) or leaf cuttings of the giant butterwort (Pinguicula gigantea). In terms of seeds, I can offer Solanum melongena 'Striped Toga,' Job's tears (Coix lacryma-jobi var. ma-yeun), or Peter Pepper. If anyone can help, it would be greatly appreciated.

My Granddad used to do this. He was a real master woodsman. I have fond memories of tromping the woods with him and he was a wealth of information that is regretably long lost to our generation. Have you considered online marketing for this? or any of the many independant herbalists who may like a non-cultivated but truely native sorce? I know my Granddad tried growning some natives in his garden one year to increase his supply. The buyer took one look and laughed at it and offered him 1/3 the price. He said he had no idea how they knew, but apparently to the decerning eye, it makes a lot of difference and they are willing to pay for the real thing.

Melatonin can help you stay asleep if you take it correctly and if it meshes with your body chemistry. I don't even have hot flashes anymore but I still from time to time have the problem with waking up in the middle of the night and not being able to fall back asleep. Other times it is not falling asleep even though I am tired. I think it is the combination of hot flashes and sleep disturbances that is the kicker. It's a combo of problems. I developed chronic urinary tract issues so I was getting up two to five times a night (my record was seven) to pee, and then inevitably, when I got back into bed, I would get a hot flash. Then covers off, cold, cover on, hot, etc. toss turn toss turn and finally comfortable and then back to sleep. Rinse, repeat. But if you threw in not being able to get to sleep, then add more of all of the above. So I added some sleep hygiene into that mix--no fluid after 8 PM, going to bed the same time every night, taking a calcium magnesium vit. C combo to help with restless legs, and then 2 or 3 mg. of Melatonin to help fall asleep. If I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn't go back to sleep, another 1-2 mg. of Melatonin. Melatonin is not harmless so take the lowest dose that works for you, and not every day or night, just enough to break the cycle of not staying awake for long times during the night. Also, for me doing yoga stretches really helped me fall asleep for some reason. Also reading and listening to relaxation tapes. As for black cohosh, its other name is snakeroot (which is probably not used for PR reasons) and you have to be careful, because there is another plant called BLUE cohosh which was/is also used for female trouble treatments, but was not the plant that had the clinical trials with. And the active components in plants vary so much and are volatile, so it is a very difficult task to find and get good quality herbal products. They have been so little studied that no one knows for sure how they work because they often have synergistic effects, meaning they work in concert with other factors, a complex web. That is why they are best taken in conjunction with other herbs and also a whole lifestyle program. Herbs may facilitate health, but they are rarely a magic bullet that you can take and see dramatic results from just a pill or three. That's why we have so much trouble studying them in clinical trials, their best effects may be in concert with many, many other variables. I take an herbal tincture that includes black cohosh, angelica, dong quai, red clover, chasteberry, siberian ginseng, wild yam root, licorice . . . like I said, maybe raspberry. But no amount of any of that stuff will help if your diet is crap and you don't get exercise and stress relief and your sleep environment is difficult. All kinds of plants have beneficial phytoestrogens at varying levels, so diet strongly plant based, (garden fresh and organic when reasonable too) is very helpful for all kinds of health problems. Constipation or lack thereof plays no small role in hormonal health, since the gut processes a lot of hormonal constituents.

Just returned from the Cullowhee Native Plant Conference, where I purchased two different plants that are almost identical to Actaea racemosa: A. americana and A. rubifolia, which likes sweeter soils. They both bloom later than A. racemosa. At a casual glance, they all are very much the same. Maybe the ones I have that bloom so late are the above, since they were rescued from mountain property?? Now I will be on a "mission" to look at the ovaries, which is one way to distinguish. Most references on the internet still have the old Cimicifuga listing. I already knew about dolls eyes, A. pachypoda since I found it on my own mt. property years ago. So much to learn!