My first thesis was written about this plant. It was a terrible thesis but I had a few good ideas and the research did teach me a lot about how people and their actions are organized almost entirely without awareness around their received beliefs.

The plant itself is rather beautiful in flower, although in the wild I haven’t seen its blossoms. It grows primarily by rhizome. This plant came with me to the west coast in a pot. It doesn’t grow naturally here, but if you go up toward the arctic you can find a different type – Hierochloë alpina. This one is Hierochloë odorata.

I use the plant as a ‘membrance from home. It grows like crazy in the plains and I have spent many wonderful months wandering around looking for it, watching people gather it, listening to people tell stories about it, reading about other cultures’ use of it. I also use it as an incense. Given my history with it, and its wonderful smell (one generic name for it is “vanilla grass”, another “holy grass,” and of course the one from North America is “sweetgrass”), I find it most efficacious in augmenting a calm, peaceful, receptive state.

But the blossoms…the are so delicate, very small, and rather like little white tongues tasting the world.

The picture, by the way, was taken last spring by peardg.

Lovely isn’t it.