Herbelegy
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I hear their names in my
sleep. I hear them calling, "Remember us, remember us, remember. . . " |
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american ginseng
black cohosh
bloodroot
kava
echinacea
eyebright
goldenseal
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| The
Geneva 1997 International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Species Survival Commission's Red List
of Threatened Plants is a six-pound, three-inch thick, book - 8 1/2 by 11 inches, 862 pages
long. It lists
33,798 plants of the as-yet-known global flora
of 275,000 species. It is heavy, this record of the passing of the Green
Nations. |
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Franklinia alatahama - Georgia
Brachystelma perditum - South Africa
Ceropegia albistepta - Zaire
Cardamine yezoensis - Japan
Scutellaria naxensis - Greece
Lacistema lucidum - Brazil
Oxygonum lobatum - Tanzania |
| Once we
found them wherever we walked. Their songs, heard by deeper ears than the physical, filled the forests. Their smell uplifted us, their
medicine healed us, their colors shaped our senses. Where do they go once they are gone? What holes within us will remain unfilled once they
are no more? |
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helonias root
lady's slipper
lomatium
partridgeberry
peyote
slippery elm
sundew |
| Lady's
slippers - moccasin flowers - are so uncommon that I have only seen one.
The flowers are much the size and shape of a baby's slipper. They shape themselves to embrace
bumblebees. |
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Echinopanax horridum - Korea
Gastonia sechellarum - Seychelles
Megalopanax rex - Cuba
Oreopanax dussii - Martinique
Polyscias cissodendron - Australia
Meryta lanceolata - French Polynesia
Aralia soratensis - Peru |
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What has it been like to grow, a part of Earth, for
700 million years? How many pollinators have you spoken to in season? How much of
your medicine have you sent into the soil and air? What other humans have you
seen in your time? Did any of them look like me?
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trillium
true unicorn
venus flytrap
virginia snakeroot
wild yam
chaparro
elephant tree |
You survived the great extinctions of the
Cretaceous. Will you make it through the Homosapien? When you are disappearing faster
than in any other geologic time? |
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Gomphostemma grandiflora - Vietnam
Acrocephalus sericeus - India
Acrymia ajugiflora - Malaysia
Monardella neglecta - California
Arischrada korolkowii - Kazakhstan
Acinos corsicus - France
Ballota cristata - Turkey |
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Embrace me redwood, hold me as if it were for the
last time. What will I do out here all alone? Upon what will I rest my eyes when
you are gone?
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blue cohosh
arnica
calamus root
cascara sagrada
gentian
goldthread
lobelia |
In the last minute of recorded geologic time we find
the visual record of the growing of life over four billion years on Earth.
Re-threading the film we begin to run it backward. We watch and see the species
removed one by one in evolutionary inversion. Un-Noahs. Unknowing, we
check them off the list of life on Earth's ark. |
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Hirschfeldia rostrata - Yemen
Iberis semperflorens - Italy
Iti lacustris - New Zealand
Xylosma cordatum - Ecuador
Xylosma grossecrenatum - New Calendonia
Xylosma nitida - Jamaica |
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Two-thirds of the evolutionary ancestors of our food
crops are endangered. Viruses and transposons intermixed the wild and
domesticated genes throughout the past ten thousand years so that our food plants
remained strong. But the genes are going now, they are going now, they are. . . maidenhair fern
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pink root
pipsissewa
stillingia
yerba mansa |
There is only emptiness in the forest where I used
to find you. I used to come to you when I was ill; in prayer I would dig you and
make you into medicine. On a long couch at home I lie, my coughing worse. |
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Lotus kunkelii - Canary islands
Fosterella alicans - Bolivia
Hymenorchis javanicus - Indonesia |
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In long cabinets your remains lie, pressed,
flattened, a map accompanying them shows where you used to grow. A scientist says he
can make you live again when "we" learn more. What about your only
pollinator - the tiny bee with the long antennae that I used to see? Will "we"
make him again as well? Who are "we"anyway? |
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Angelica
Osha
. . . . .
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| I have never been good at goodbyes.
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