The Korean Herbalist

  Korea's National Flower Is Also a Freemason Symbol, a Japanese Noble Crest, and a Traditional Skin Medicine   Hibiscus syriacus · 무궁화 (Rose of Sharon) There is a flower blooming right now in the parking lots of Korean government buildings, along the medians of Korean roads, in the gardens of Korean schools, and beside the entrances of Korean public institutions. It is pink-purple, five-petaled, with a prominent central column of stamens and a deep red eye at the base of each petal. It blooms continuously from July through October, each individual flower lasting only one day before dropping, replaced by new buds the following morning. This is 무궁화 (*Hibiscus syriacus*), the national flower of South Korea. Most Koreans have seen it thousands of times. Fewer have looked at it closely enough to know much about it — where it came from, what it was used for before it became a symbol, or why it has become entangled in some of the stranger corners of Korean internet...

 Korea Listed It as an Ecological Threat. Europe Is Researching It as a Diabetes Medicine.  Amorpha fruticosa · 족제비싸리 (False Indigo-Bush) There is a shrub growing along Korean hillside margins and riverbanks that most people cannot name. It is common enough to form dense thickets — sometimes in the company of 칡 and 싸리, which are equally difficult to tell apart from a distance — but uncommon enough in most people's field of knowledge that it passes unnamed and unnoticed. The identifying feature, when it is flowering in July and August, is a narrow upright spike of flowers: densely packed, the individual petals a single shade of deep purple-blue, the orange-yellow anthers providing a startling contrast that makes the spike look almost luminescent in good light. This is *Amorpha fruticosa* — 족제비싸리 in Korean, false indigo-bush in English. It is a North American native that was deliberately introduced across the Northern Hemisphere for erosion control and ornamental pl...

  Evening Primrose Oil Costs $30 a Bottle. The Plant It Comes From Grows Free on Every Korean Hillside.  Oenothera biennis · 달맞이꽃 There is a plant growing at the lower edges of Korean hillsides right now — the kind of semi-wild margin where cultivated land gives way to scrub and the grass gets tall and untended. It is upright, somewhat coarse-looking, with lance-shaped leaves running up a central stem and clusters of yellow flowers opening at the top. During the day the flowers are often slightly wilted, half-closed, looking a little tired. In the evening, they open fully, and the color shifts to a cleaner, brighter yellow. This is Oenothera biennis — 달맞이꽃 in Korean. The name means "the flower that greets the moon." The flowers open at dusk and close by mid-morning the next day. If you only walk past it in daylight, you are seeing it at its worst. The seeds of this plant are pressed into an oil sold in pharmacies and health food stores worldwide for ...

  America Spends Millions Fighting This Plant. Korean Kids Used to Dig It Up for a Snack. Pueraria montana var. lobata · 칡 When I was young, finding a good 칡 root was a skill. You learned it from older kids or from adults who had grown up doing the same thing — following the vines back from wherever they were climbing, tracing the stems down to the ground, digging at the base until the root came loose. Some roots were sweet and worth chewing. Others were bitter all the way through and you spat them out. The ones worth keeping had a clean starchiness to them, a faint sweetness under the earthiness, and you chewed them slowly, working the starch out of the fiber the way a cow works cud, until there was nothing left but dry threads you threw away. This was a snack. There were no convenience stores. There was a river bank, a hillside, and whatever grew there. That plant — the one Korean children dug up and chewed on summer afternoons — is the same plant that American stat...

  The Tomato in Your Garden Is Poisonous — Just Not the Part You Eat  Solanum lycopersicum var. cerasiforme · 방울토마토 Every Korean vegetable garden in summer has one. The wire-and-stake support structure, the sprawling stems that need tying back every few days, the small yellow flowers that appear before the fruit, and then the clusters of green globes slowly working their way toward red. 방울토마토 — cherry tomato — is one of the most commonly grown vegetables in Korean home gardens and allotment plots, familiar enough that most people who grow it have never thought twice about the plant itself. The fruit is fine. The rest of the plant is not.  A Member of a Dangerous Family Solanum lycopersicum belongs to the Solanaceae — the nightshade family. This is a family that contains some of the most useful food plants in the world: tomatoes, potatoes, eggplant, peppers, and tobacco. It also contains some of the most toxic plants in the temperate world: deadly nightshade...

  The Tree That Lines Korean Roads Has a Cousin That Makes Maple Syrup Acer buergerianum · 중국단풍 / Acer palmatum · 단풍나무 If you have spent time walking along Korean roads or through Korean parks in summer, you have almost certainly stood under one of these trees without knowing its name. They are planted everywhere — along highway medians, in school grounds, beside walking paths, in parking lot islands. And in the hills and temple grounds of Korea, a more graceful relative spreads its layered branches in the dappled shade. Both belong to the same genus. Both turn extraordinary colours in autumn. Most people who pass them daily could not tell you what either one is called. The roadside tree is Acer buergerianum — 중국단풍, trident maple. The one in the garden and on the hillside is Acer palmatum — 단풍나무, Japanese maple. And both are part of a genus that, on the other side of the world, produces maple syrup — and in Korea, has its own version of that tradition entirely. ...