Today we’ve visited the Aldo Leopold Foundation, where we saw his little shack in the middle of the “Sand County,” as well as his restoration project that has benefited the area he lived in with his family, who were also a great part of this process. There we found a plant called Yarrow, or Achillea millefolium - a herbaceous perennial plant from the Asteraceae family. We’ve seen this plant before at the Mirror Lake SP, where it was in a shaded area. In this case, however, we saw it around the prairie area of the Leopolds’ land, close to the grass and some plants that looked like legumes due to their leaves. While we were there though, I didn’t observe any animal interactions. The ground was quite sandy, and it was moist and warm, giving the yarrow lots of sunlight.
I actually chose this plant because I had just heard about it for the first time outside of class on Saturday, one day before our trip begun. So I just thought it was so coincidental that I had to write about it, even though now I see that it appears to be a fairly common plant. In any case, I heard about it from an acquaintance who lives in Oregon and was visiting for a few days. She has an extensive garden there and nearly 100 chickens. She was telling me about how she recently treated one of her chickens with it: she grabbed a few yarrow leaves, then chewed them to break up the cell walls and activate their medicinal properties. She told me also that the addition of saliva, besides creating a paste, also serves to activate the compounds on the leaves even more. It’s especially effective when this mixture is used on yourself due to the relation between your saliva and your own blood, but it worked quite well on the chicken, acting as a coagulant and astringent.
I wonder if they were brought to the Leopolds’ land intentionally or not. Due to their medicinal properties, I would assume that it would make sense to have this plant within arm’s reach. However, if so, I wonder why he didn’t put it on his almanac (or maybe he did? I can’t be certain since we haven’t read it all). In any case, I feel that a plant as such should be talked about, even if only to show how plants have been aiding us for a long time, and in different ways.
Journal entry by Deborah
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