A Whiff of Wintergreen Neri-koh - Esprit de la Nature (Be-en-Foret)

A scent-scape recreation of my late summer wintergreen harvest in the Boreal Forest

The fragrance of a coniferous forest with whiff of wintergreen.

Contains: Balsam Fir resin and needles, Wintergreen leaves, berries and extract, White Cedar wood, Red Cedar Wood, Spruce resin and wood, green smelling Frankincense Dazwellia, Ambergris.  All bound with organic Honey

 

One of my last wild-craftings of the late summer is Wintergreen.  I start my search for Wintergreen right before the leaves of the trees start to fall, covering the understory, concealing Wintergreen’s dark green leaves and colored berries.  Small plants, the Wintergreen tribe meanders through the forest floor at the edges of clearings, stopping their colonization where the air turns dark and somber.  To find Wintergreen, I have to be observant and connect to the forest-scape.  She is one of the plants that I have to use my eyes, and not my nose to find.  Even if I step on some plants while wandering, her evergreen, leathery leaves hold her scent tight.  It is Her mature bright red berries that often give her away.  To make sure it is her, I bend down to squeeze a leaf between my fingers and am rewarded with an elegant and very fresh green scent that is slightly fruity and woody.

 

 

I dedicated an entire morning to harvesting Wintergreen because she grows by a very shallow, running root system.  If one of her leaves does not easily detach, I can pull up a tangle of roots.  So, I harvest slow and low by setting down on the mossy forest floor. I carefully hold her woody stem as I gently pluck a leaf or two.  Harvesting is a pleasure not a chore.  Wintergreens perfume lends a fine top note to the air which is already filled with the scents of the surrounding trees.  This scent-scape is made even more aromatic by the scents of tree litter that are released when I lay down and crawl to harvest.  

 

 

Then there are her berries.  A rare gastronomic treat.  Her berries smell exactly like her leaves and have a sweet, cool, smooth, refreshing taste, similar to mint, but softer.  Her red berries have a distinct medicinal bite that I do not like.  But, the half-ripe, pink-blushed, white berries are the best wintergreen candy I have ever tasted.  The person who invented for Wint-O-Green Life Savers candy back in 1918 must have been familiar with the berries.  Not only do the candies have a Wintergreen flavor and scent, but the candy’s white color and chalky texture mirror exactly that of the pale berries.  Unfortunately, the candies are now artificially flavored.

 

 

As her English name indicates Wintergreen’s leaves and berries persist in the forest during the snow time.  It makes her one of the forest healers for winter and early spring.  One Wintergreen’s medicines is the ability to soothe pain which she does for the forest through her roots which tap into the mycorrhizal network.  During the winter, small snow-burrowing animals must be happy to come across her luscious and soothing berries to slake the stress of winter.  Humans made Aspirin from the methyl salicylate she shares.  We also call Wintergreen “Tea-Berry” for her delicious healing properties that can be extracted in water.   I was not surprised to find out that in aromatherapy, her fragrance is used to look at spiritual and emotional pain from a different perspective and to reconnect to the essential.  Something I can relate to in my lived experience with Wintergreen.  I feel my perspective shift as I crawl on the forest floor, with my nose in wild gardens of tiny plants and mosses, and then stop to take a break, by laying back to look up at the trees soaring in the overstory.  There are so many worlds in the forest.      

 

 

 

This price is for 8 Neri-koh pellets nested in Fir Balsam tips