Exploring the Woods Near my Home

When I went for my walk in the woods today, it was actually the first time I had been round the trail in a while... The rains and the cold make me look for more indoor projects. I felt disoriented at first by the now open, huge and dead-ness of the wooded area, I was starting to feel a little mawkish for the summer cause there was nothing apart from brown dead leaves to look at on the ground, and alot of briers to get caught on my clothes. Until I came upon a superb bright green lichen ( a fuzzy wuzzy fungus ) called Usnea! I learned about this plant many years back at a'wellness weeds' class, that it was a natural remedy for strep throat, but I found my curiosity was peeked to really make sure this was the same usnea sold in health food stores and loved by wildcrafting herbalists living in small homes. So, while looking up information on identification, I found a neat trick in making sure it is really Usnea and not some other look alike lichen! Break open the main stem and check for a white middle, kinda like peeling the bark off a tree and seeing the lighter color inner wood underneath. Usnea's inner stem is a white strip. I broke mine open and found the white!

Here is some medicinal information on this cool small lichen::

'Usnea has been employed medicinally for no less than 1000 years. Usnic acid ( C18H16O7 ), a powerful antibiotic and antifungal agent is found in most species. This, mixed with the hairlike structure of the lichen, suggests that Usnea lent itself well to treating surface wounds when sterile gauze and modern antibiotics were unavailable. It is also edible and high in vitamin C.

In modern Yankee herbal medication, Usnea is primarily used in lung and higher respiratory tract infections, and urinary tract infections.

Usnea lichen is necessary to note as it has life-saving potential. Indigenous Americans employed it as a compress to dreadful battle injuries to stop infection and gangrene, and it was also taken internally to fight infections. Usnea contains strong antibiotics which can halt infection and are broad spectrum and effective against all gram-positive and tuberculosis bacterial species, providing protection for children in baby cribs. Usnea has a couple of unique characteristics which make its identification easy if stuck in the wilderness a long way from a hospital.