Herbs with Rosalee

Your tongue can tell you more about an herb than you might think.
In this episode, I explore one of the most useful skills in herbalism: learning to listen to the language of taste. The five flavors—bitter, sweet, pungent, salty, and sour—each have so much information to offer about a plant’s qualities and actions in your body, giving you a practical way to understand herbs (instead of trying to memorize endless lists of which herbs are “good for” which conditions).
I’ll guide you through these five flavors as we take a walk through my garden, highlighting each of the flavors with a different herb. For each of these herbs, you’ll learn how it tastes (though of course, the best way to learn this is to taste it yourself!), what that taste is telling you about the qualities of the plant, and some ways you can use those qualities to guide how you work with the plant.
Plus, I’ll introduce you to the Flavor Wheel, a simple tool I created to help you match the taste of an herb with its energetics and actions. You can get your own copy of the Flavor Wheel when you sign up for my free mini Herbal Energetics Course, which is happening right now and for a short time only! Sign up here.
Here's some of what you'll hear:
► Do you tend to feel hot, tense, and wound up by the end of the day? You'll hear why a bitter herb can be such a good match.
► Do you notice dryness in your throat, skin, or digestion? You'll learn how a sweet, slippery plant softens dry tissues throughout your body.
► Are you feeling frazzled, overworked, and spread too thin? You'll find out which pungent, aromatic herb can bring steadiness and clear focus.
► Have you ever wondered how an herb can be salty when it tastes nothing like table salt? You'll get the answer and why it matters.
► Curious why one bright, sour plant has such a long relationship with the heart? You'll hear how it supports both the physical and emotional heart.
The more you taste your herbs, the more you realize that plants are constantly giving us clues—you just have to learn their language. And that’s what I love about this approach: it gives us a way to slow down, pay attention, and let the plant tell us something about itself.
If you’re ready to learn more, come join me in my free mini Herbal Energetics Course! I’m looking forward to seeing you there.
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Get full show notes, transcript, and more information at: herbswithrosaleepodcast.com
Would you prefer watching this episode? If so, click here for the video.
For more behind-the-scenes of this podcast, follow @rosaleedelaforet on Instagram!
Working successfully with herbs requires three essential skills. Get introduced to them by taking my free herbal jumpstart course when you sign up for my newsletter.
If you enjoy the Herbs with Rosalee podcast, we could use your support! Please consider leaving a 5-star rating and review and sharing the show with someone who needs to hear it!
On the podcast, we explore the many ways plants heal, as food, as medicine, and through nature connection. Each week, I focus on a single seasonal plant and share trusted herbal knowledge so that you can get the best results when using herbs for your health.
Learn more about Herbs with Rosalee at herbswithrosalee.com.
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Rosalee is an herbalist and author of the bestselling book Alchemy of Herbs: Transform Everyday Ingredients Into Foods & Remedies That Heal and co-author of the bestselling book Wild Remedies: How to Forage Healing Foods and Craft Your Own Herbal Medicine. She's a registered herbalist with the American Herbalists Guild and teaches many popular online courses. Read about how Rosalee went from having a terminal illness to being a bestselling author in her full story here.

I once heard from a woman who had been studying herbs for two years and had gathered an entire cabinet full of them. But when her mom caught a cold, she stood in her kitchen with the kettle on and couldn’t bring herself to make her a cup of tea.
She was afraid she might get it wrong.
If you’ve ever felt that way, I want you to know that your caution isn’t a problem. In fact, I think it’s the exact instinct a good herbalist is built on.
In this episode, I’m sharing a simple way to approach herbal safety so that fear doesn’t have to keep you from actually working with the plants you’ve been learning about.
► Why being cautious about herbs doesn’t mean you’re behind or aren’t ready
► Why many familiar herbs, including ginger, peppermint, rosemary, and turmeric, may already be part of your everyday life
► When an herb, medication, pregnancy, health condition, or individual circumstance means it’s time to slow down and look more closely
► How to recognize when you can move forward, when you should proceed with caution, and when it’s best to step back and seek other help
► The simple green, yellow, and red “stoplight” framework I created to make herbal safety easier to understand and remember
After more than twenty years of teaching about herbs, one thing I’ve learned is that complicated information becomes much more useful when you can turn it into a framework that sticks.
That’s why I created this herbal safety stoplight. 🟢🟡🔴
Once you have a reliable way to assess the herb and the person in front of you, you don’t have to let fear make every decision. You can approach herbs with both care and growing confidence.
I teach this framework inside my free Mini Herbal Energetics course, where you’ll also receive a printable herbal safety guide you can keep and return to whenever you need it.
Join the free Mini Herbal Energetics course here.

Plantain was the first herb I ever learned, almost twenty years ago, and it still amazes me. It grows in sidewalk cracks, driveways, trails, and other disturbed places, which makes it incredibly easy to overlook.
But once you understand plantain through the lens of herbal energetics, this humble plant starts to look very different.
In this episode, I’m busting three common myths about plantain and showing you how its cooling and moistening qualities connect its many uses.
► Why calling plantain “just a weed” misses the incredible herbal ally that may be growing right at your feet
► What research into plantain extract and oral mucositis can teach us about this often-overlooked plant
► Why plantain is useful for so much more than bug bites, and how its cooling, moistening energetics help explain its affinity for hot, irritated tissues
► How the same qualities herbalists appreciate for bites, burns, and irritated skin can also be useful inside the body
► Why herbalists reach for plantain tea for everything from an irritated digestive tract to hot, dry, lingering coughs
Here’s what I love about plantain: these uses don’t have to be a random list you memorize. Cooling and moistening is the thread that connects them.
That’s what herbal energetics gives you. Instead of memorizing a hundred herbs for a hundred different conditions, you begin to understand how a plant actually works and recognize when its qualities might be a good match.
This is exactly what I teach in my Herbal Energetics Course, and I’d love to give you a sneak peek.
I’ve created a free Plantain Monograph that goes deeper into its energetics, research, preparations, and safety. It’s one of more than 60 herbal monographs included in the course.
When you get your free Plantain Monograph, I’ll also let you know when enrollment for my Herbal Energetics Course opens.
Get your free Plantain Monograph here.

Rosemary is probably best known as a culinary herb, but there’s so much more to this familiar plant. Once you understand its warming, stimulating energetics, many of rosemary’s seemingly unrelated uses start to make sense.
In this short episode, I’m sharing three surprising ways to work with rosemary as medicine and showing you how herbal energetics can help you understand why a plant works the way it does.
► How rosemary’s warming and stimulating qualities can support circulation and help cold hands feel warmer
► Why rosemary is known for its impressive antioxidant qualities, and how research has explored its ability to reduce potentially harmful compounds formed when cooking meat at high temperatures
► Rosemary’s long association with remembrance and what modern research says about its effects on memory and cognitive function
► How rosemary’s aromatic qualities connect its traditional uses with what we now know about its chemistry
► Why understanding an herb’s energetics can help you see the connections between seemingly different uses instead of memorizing endless lists
That’s what I love about herbal energetics. When you understand that rosemary is warming, stimulating, and gently moving, its uses for cold hands, sluggish digestion, and a foggy mind no longer feel disconnected. You begin to see the pattern of the plant.
This is exactly what I teach in my Herbal Energetics Course, and I’d love to give you a sneak peek.
I’ve created a free Rosemary Monograph that goes deeper into rosemary’s energetics, research, preparations, dosage, and safety. It’s one of more than 60 herbal monographs included in the course.
When you get your free Rosemary Monograph, I’ll also let you know when enrollment for my Herbal Energetics Course opens.
Get your free Rosemary Monograph here.

Pokeweed is poisonous—but that’s not the whole story. What if knowing how to work with this potent plant could turn fear into respect, and even put a delicious wild green on your dinner table?
As many of us learned growing up, poke (Phytolacca americana) is a plant that deserves a healthy amount of caution. It is poisonous, after all! But AC and Isaac Hill have spent years learning how to work with poke as food, medicine, and more, and they joined me in this episode to dispel some of the fear surrounding this generous and abundant plant.
During our conversation, AC and Isaac explore the many faces of poke: a powerful lymphatic herb, an expectorant and immune stimulant, a traditional wild food, a striking dye plant, and a plant with a fascinating history of magical use. And perhaps most importantly, they share the practical knowledge that makes all the difference in preparing and working with pokeweed safely.
Curious about bringing poke into your own kitchen? Be sure to download the beautifully illustrated recipe card for AC and Isaac’s Poke Salad here.
By the end of this episode, you’ll know:
► How poke differs from other lymphatic herbs like cleavers and chickweed
► Which part of the poke plant to harvest for food (and the physical clues that tell you when it’s ready)
► Tips for growing, harvesting, and extending the season for poke
► The simple method that AC and Isaac use to turn this poisonous plant into a delicious spring green
► How Isaac views the botany and actions of poke through an astrological lens
► A clever way to make your tinctures more potent (for many plants, not just poke!)
► and so much more…
For those of you who don’t know them, AC & Isaac Hill are the hosts of the Plant Cunning Podcast, where they have interviewed some of the most influential herbalists, permaculturists, astrologers and spiritual practitioners in the world.
AC is a community herbalist, product maker, and co-director of the Actaea Institute for Herbal Medicine and Aromatherapy. Isaac is a permaculture gardener, astrologer, and author of The Zodiac Garden Guide. They are married and live on a small herb farm in Central NY.
I’m excited to share our conversation with you today!
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Get full show notes, transcript, and more information at: herbswithrosaleepodcast.com
Would you prefer watching this episode? If so, click here for the video.
You can find AC and Isaac on Instagram.
For more behind-the-scenes of this podcast, follow @rosaleedelaforet on Instagram!
Working successfully with herbs requires three essential skills. Get introduced to them by taking my free herbal jumpstart course when you sign up for my newsletter.
If you enjoy the Herbs with Rosalee podcast, we could use your support! Please consider leaving a 5-star rating and review and sharing the show with someone who needs to hear it!
On the podcast, we explore the many ways plants heal, as food, as medicine, and through nature connection. Each week, I focus on a single seasonal plant and share trusted herbal knowledge so that you can get the best results when using herbs for your health.
Learn more about Herbs with Rosalee at herbswithrosalee.com.
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Rosalee is an herbalist and author of the bestselling book Alchemy of Herbs: Transform Everyday Ingredients Into Foods & Remedies That Heal and co-author of the bestselling book Wild Remedies: How to Forage Healing Foods and Craft Your Own Herbal Medicine. She's a registered herbalist with the American Herbalists Guild and teaches many popular online courses. Read about how Rosalee went from having a terminal illness to being a bestselling author in her full story here.