Late August in the Mid-Atlantic has a particular smell right now: it’s one that I love but not everyone does. The forests take on a particular scent that I think I could identify reliably blind folded: black walnut hulls are turning green. It’s a smell you either love of hate- and I love it! Those hulls are still green and firm — not yet blackened and mushy — and this is exactly the window herbalists wait for, since the compound that makes black walnut hull useful, juglone, runs highest before the hull starts breaking down.
This issue also pulls in two herbs from well outside my region. Out west, osha root is finishing its bloom in the high meadows of the Rockies, with the actual root harvest still weeks off — but there's a serious safety conversation worth having before that window opens, so we're getting ahead of it. And down along the Gulf Coast, yaupon holly, the only caffeine-containing plant native to North America, is having a bit of a moment as a homegrown alternative to imported tea and coffee.
Here's what's worth knowing about all three right now.