Aloha,
On 11/29/2007 at 12:33 PM Harry Roth wrote:
>I am working on something that focuses on plant-related magic practices
>that originated in (primarily Western) Europe but that might now be
>practiced in North America. I've been trying to come up with some way
>to refer to that without sounding clumsy but I haven't gotten anywhere.
>"The European stream of witchcraft"? "Western" poses all kinds of
>leghold traps. I am just coming up empty for good, short ways of saying
>this. Any possibilities?
Yes, sometimes it's a challenge to put together a pithy turn of phrase.
Part of what I'm wondering about is just how specifically you intend to
describe the plant and herb lore/practices? Are you linking certain things
now found in North America with a particular historical culture from
the European region? Or just as coming from the European region in general?
European herbalists assembled fairly exhaustive compendiums of herbal
lore/practice which fed back into, perhaps over time displaced, more
locally
based lore/practices.
Plus, immigrants moved plants, wittingly or accidentally, all over the
planet.
Here, for instance, is a situation that decisively shaped my own plant and
herb lore/practice.
During the 18th and especially the mid to late 19th C., immigrants to
California, mostly from Europe, introduced a great variety of plants. Some
of the intrusive grasses displaced native grasses over large areas,
altering the
character of the landscape. The golden hues of the California hills come
from
these intrusive grasses. Not from native grasses, which are silvery green
in hue.
The *natural* landscape that I have known all my lifetime is, in fact, made
up of mostly intrusive species, recently introduced. The actual landscape
of
native savanna plant communities is, in fact, one that I cannot know
outside
of special preserves and historical reconstructions.
Honestly, the phrases I use most often to describe this are *Ack!* and
*Doh!*
Musing My Whole Backyard Was Introduced/Intrusive Plants! Rose,
Pitch
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