This fall, when parents dropped off their children at De Leertrommel, a school about 10 miles northwest of Brussels, the young pupils began their studies as they had for many years before. 

But while the U-shaped, seven-room school constructed in the 1960s looked much like any other, it represents a major leap forward in sustainable construction: it had been completely renovated in a €2 million (USD $1.9 million) project to become the first Flemish school to ever be built with hemp.

“The project was to build well-ventilated classrooms where pupils can be comfortable and healthy throughout the year,” says Charlotte De Bellefroid, a spokesperson for IsoHemp, the Belgian company that fabricated the school’s hemp-based construction materials.

IsoHemp’s blocks, and alternatives made by many others, are made of hempcrete, a mix of hemp fibers, water, and lime or clay, which acts as a binder. Despite the simplicity of those natural ingredients, hempcrete — which consumers, businesses and governments around the world are growing to view as a sustainable building block of the future — has a dizzying array of benefits: it is fire resistant, provides soundproofing, insulates or stores heat (depending on external temperatures), repels mold and pests, and is malleable enough to allow for various aesthetic styles. Plus, hemp itself is a sustainable crop that needs few pesticides, is ideal for rotation, and has quick-growing roots that prevent soil erosion.

But most importantly of all, hempcrete has a very low carbon footprint. It requires three times less heat to create than concrete, weighs about one-eighth as much as concrete (leading to fewer transport-related emissions), and actively sequesters CO2 — according to one Cambridge University researcher, hemp absorbs between eight to 15 metric tons of carbon per hectare, significantly more than the two to six metric tons typically captured by forests.

Research by IsoHemp found that a single cubic meter of its hempcrete removes 75 kilograms of CO2 from the atmosphere over its lifetime — worth a few years of car use, depending on home size. It also has approximately as much thermal resistance as a double-glazed window (1-5 W/m²•K), and its honeycombed structure offers about enough soundproofing to block out the noise of a washing machine (44 decibels). “Zero carbon buildings are a possibility,” says De Bellefroid. “But we have to act really quick.”

In the struggle to slow climate change, experts say that decarbonizing construction can have an enormous impact. The construction industry is responsible for 39 percent of global carbon emissions. Concrete is one of the worst offenders, wreaking vast damage from air pollution to sand mining. If the industry behind cement — an ingredient of concrete — were a country, it would be the world’s third largest emitter. 

That unsustainability is fueling an explosion in interest for green concrete alternatives, demand for which is reaching heady highs. Last year IsoHemp, which was founded in 2012, opened a $5.9 million factory capable of producing up to five million hempcrete blocks annually. The Belgian company is growing about 30 percent a year in capacity, and is working on several key projects across Europe, including the renovation of 900 homes on a public housing estate in the center of Brussels. 

While hempcrete has been used in Europe for decades, the US could soon follow suit. For many years, industrial hemp was illegal in the US due to hemp’s association with drug use, despite the fact that it does not contain more than 0.3 percent THC, the active ingredient in marijuana that makes users high. Building residential homes with hempcrete was therefore effectively outlawed until 2018, when the Farm Bill distinguished between hemp and cannabis plants. Then, in September 2022, hemp building materials were added to the model US residential building code, paving the way for legal use in 2024.

“As the world wakes up to the seriousness of the situation with regards to climate change and resource limits, the search for alternatives is bound to grow,” says Steve Allin, director of the International Hemp Building Association. “Which is a relief after feeling as if we were shouting in the wilderness for so many years.”

According to Allin, author of the book Hemp Buildings: 50 International Case Studies, hempcrete has been used in everything from a renovation of a 15th century oak-frame building in northern France, to the extension of a Nepalese hospital, a pioneering design project in North Carolina from 2010, and even a British grocery chain. “We can build in a better way for a cleaner, more sustainable future,” he says.

Katie MacDonald, director of Virginia University’s Before Building Laboratory, which experiments with low-carbon building material systems, is developing hemp panels similar to plywood and assessing whether hemp could be a sustainable crop grown in the state as a replacement for the waning tobacco industry.

“There’s an incredible opportunity in the natural material space,” she says. “It’s exciting that there is a broader public adoption. But there are challenges ahead. Can we get construction industry adoption? Is it easy to assemble and use? Is the product price competitive? How do we make an assembly that’s really advancing the cause?”

The problem, for now, is the waiting time for supply to ramp up, with backorders in some cases taking several months. IsoHemp is already exporting blocks to the United States, Australia, South Africa and several other European countries. “We need many more centers for processing in order to make it worthwhile for farmers growing it and for architects and builders to be able to use it,” says Allin.

But hemp is one of the fastest growing plants in the world, alongside bamboo, and can grow 50 times faster than wood, meaning that enough biomass to build a small single-family house will grow in five months on one hectare of land.

One of the few aspects where there is room for improvement is hempcrete’s inability to work as a load-bearing material. While it can be formed to surround timber or other types of framework, or made into blocks, bricks or panels, it cannot, for now, be used entirely alone. But MacDonald believes even that will eventually be solved.

In the meantime, eager practitioners aren’t waiting around. After Matthias Bank lost his family home and office in the largest wildfire in Los Angeles County’s history in 2018, he wanted to “turn the tragedy into an opportunity to rebuild our home as a living laboratory of best practices in sustainable, disaster resistant, healthy building.” 

Research quickly pointed him towards hemp. “Hempcrete is very hard to burn, while also being low in embodied carbon, healthy, and when used correctly, superior from a seismic safety point of view as well,” says Bank. 

That led to Bank becoming a member of US Hemp Building Association and his family have been using hempcrete to build their chicken coop — with the hope of constructing their main house with it too, pending permits. The process hasn’t always been smooth. The first set of blocks fell apart because they were made with the wrong binding material. But eventually, he was able to source better quality hempcrete and the results have put a grin on his face.

“I am glad to say the chicken coop looks great,” says Bank. “The hempcrete is so lovely, my wife is not even sure she wants to plaster over it. We joke that the chickens have a better house than we do.”

Peter Yeung is a Contributing Editor at Reasons to be Cheerful. A Paris-based journalist, he also writes for publications including the Guardian, the LA Times and the BBC. He’s filed stories from across Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas.

This article previously appeared in Reasons to be Cheerful.

As a society, we have an anosmic view of history. We don’t think about how things smelt or what olfaction meant to people in the past because olfaction is not a primary consideration in the present. When we think of the scents of the past, it is with modern snobbishness and assurance that all those early primitive people could hardly smell anything over the miasma of pre-modern filth. Nothing could be further from the truth for the Ancient Egyptians, as evidenced by their writings, art, and tomb goods. While they suffered from the same stinks that plagued urban areas for aeons, they also adored and exonerated aromatics and strongly associated them with divinity and preserving the soul in the afterlife.

“Pure, pure is the Osiris, Great of the Five, master of seats, Sishou. The perfume, the perfume opens your mouth. It is the saliva of Horus, the perfume, it is the saliva of, {///} the perfume. It is what makes firm the heart of the two lords, the perfume.”

The tomb of Petosiris
Lefebvre, Gustave Le Tombeau de Petosiris, 1924, vol.1, p.131

The First Perfume Lovers

A lot of what we know about ancient Egyptians comes from their tombs, which has skewed popular concepts of the Egyptians as death-obsessed and morose. I think it is more accurate to say that the Egyptians were sensualists whose appreciation for life was informed by an acceptance of death, as well as a rich and developed concept of an afterlife. They filled their tombs with wooden scenes and sculptures depicting everyday life as well as the accruements of daily existence, not only for use in the afterlife but as a celebration of life itself. Perfume was a big part of that celebration.

In later periods, when honouring one’s ancestors became a prominent practice, perfume was a common memorial offering. Perfuming equipment and perfume bottles were common grave goods for even those of modest means during the Ptolemaic Period. Descriptions of perfume-making, perfume application, and offering perfumed items to the gods are common motifs throughout Egyptian history in both temple and tomb art. In fact, an entire coded language in Egyptian art tells viewers what the subjects smelt like.

Let us look at the image of Sennedjem and his wife above. Hathor sprouts out of the Tree of Life, which in Egyptian art is a fig tree. Hathor is offering the food and waters of eternal life to the couple. Looks at what is just above the plate Hathor is holding. Those are four sacred Blue Lotuses and a Reed Flower, signifying that the items offered not only smell great but are, in fact, divine. As the scent of the Blue Lotus was considered holy and could consecrate divinity on things associated with it.

Also, look at Sennedjem and his wife; both are wearing perfumed wax cones on their heads. The cones have been freshly anointed with Myrrh; hence the reddish drips at the tops of the cones. Additionally, the wife’s cone has been pierced with a fragrant Blue Lotus, which may mean she pre-deceased her husband, or she just decided to throw an extra aromatic adornment on; it’s not completely clear. To an Egyptian audience, however, this would all be understood as information about the scent and spiritual state of the people present.

Temple of the Nose

It is important to remember that different cultures perceive and value olfaction differently than modern Western culture. I think we could learn a thing or two from societies that value olfaction. Ancient Egyptians lived for scent and understood their world through their noses. In their worldview, life came from breathing, and the breath of life was synonymous with the act of olfaction.

Egyptian writing is filled with allusions to scents, from talk of a lover’s sweet-smelling sigh to lengthy descriptions of the foulness of Ibis droppings in the summer sun. The ancient Egyptians’ vocabulary for odour and taste was more sophisticated than modern English, which must borrow words from other languages (like umami) to describe the sensory phenomenon when English isn’t sufficient. New Kingdom physicians identified 20 different scent categories and recognised that people often lost their sense of smell as they aged. They concluded that it was a sign that the Ba component of the Egyptian concept of the soul was already dissipating from the body.

Egyptian physicians were interested in the anatomy of the nose. Though they didn’t understand the olfactive process, they did know that the internal chambers played a part. The ancient Egyptian word for nose is fnd. From the Edward Smith Surgical Papyrus, we know that the area of the very back of the internal nose where the cribriform plate is located was called shtyt nd fnd. This has been translated since the 1950s as the inner chamber of the nose. However, shtyt is a word only used in a religious context, specifically in religious architecture, and means the dwelling place of the gods. So a better translation of shtyt nd fnd would be the nasal sanctuary.

Rene Schwaller de Lubicz argued that the layout of the original Luxor temple corresponds to a longitudinal dissection of the human head which would place the cribriform plate at the back wall of Room V, which was the Anointing Room. The place where the Pharaoh would be ritually made divine through the application of fragrances. Thereby embedding the anatomy of olfaction into sacred architecture. Schwaller goes on to state that additions to the temple system corresponded with other body parts, thereby making Luxor an anthropomorphic structure, a temple of man. I’ve yet to see conclusive data to back up Schwaller’s theory, but it is a fascinating idea. It should also be noted that Room V has been the Sanctuary to Alexander the Great since the Hellenistic invasion of Egypt. So even if earlier generations did intend this olfactive architecture, the use of Room V changed over time.

Hail, O Ye Gods Whose Odour Is Sweet

Olfaction and fragrance played a huge role in both political legitimacy and religious sanctity in Egypt. Take the below re-branding of the birth of Hatshepsut. Hatshepsut was born in a turbulent time. Her grandfather usurped the throne, and her brother/husband was only the third ruler of her dynasty. When he died young, she, as Queen, only had a daughter, her nephew by a co-wife was the only male heir. However, he was too young to rule. So, Hatshepsut became Queen Regent and eventually became sole Pharoah naming her nephew as her heir instead of co-ruler. In this unprecedented move, it was important for Hatshepsut to legitimise her reign, which she did, in part, by re-branding herself from the daughter of an upstart Pharaoh to the pleasant-smelling offspring of a god.

“He (Amun-Ra) found her (Hatshepsut’s mother) as she slept in the beauty of her palace. She waked at the fragrance of the god, which she smelled in the presence of his majesty. He went to her immediately, coivit cum ea (slept with her), he imposed his desire upon her, he caused that she should see him in his form of a god. When he came before her, she rejoiced at the sight of his beauty, his love passed into her limbs, which the fragrance of the god flooded; all his odours were from Punt.”

J. H. Breasted, Ancient Records of Egypt, Part Two, § 196

The reference to Punt is essential. Early in her reign as Pharaoh, Hatshepsut commissioned an expedition to Punt and set up trade relations with the far-off kingdom. This was a huge diplomatic success for her, showing the power and reach of the Pharaoh. It was also an economic triumph and a fragrant one, as the primary goods brought back were frankincense, myrrh, and other aromatics materials. The aromatic symbolism of this rewritten birth and expedition would have been evident to her subjects. Pleasant smells signify holiness, and the King of the Gods smells like the fragrances from Punt. Punt is viewed as the ancient Egyptians’ ancestral homeland and Amun’s birthplace. Amun is the natural father of the Pharaoh, and he gave his divine and ancestral fragrances to the Pharaoh at conception. Pharaoh Hatshepsut reaffirmed this birthright by bringing the odours from Punt to Egypt and enriching the kingdom, so clearly, she had the divine right to rule.

A Perfumed Cosmology

As we see in the Ani Papyrus and Sennedjem’s tomb, olfaction played a role in Ancient Egyptian cosmology and the concept of the afterlife, partly because the Egyptians did not associate the senses with the body but rather with the vital spark or Ka. So, of course, one could taste, see, touch, and smell after death because the Ka did not die.

Ancient Egyptian religion emphasised creating order (Ma’at) out of chaos (Isfet). They saw Ma’at personified in the progression of time and seasonality of nature. Pleasant aromas from the natural world were synonymous with Ma’at and the gods. Foul odours weren’t seen as evil, more like disordered or unbalanced. Perhaps because of scent’s ephemeral nature, fragrance and the soul are often paralleled in Egyptian mythology.

The Book of the Dead, known to ancient Egyptians as the Book of Emerging Forth into the Light, was a collection of spells and guidance for the soul in the afterlife. It was a New Kingdom best seller based on the older Coffin and Pyramid Texts. While copies varied, most Books of the Dead included the Opening of the Mouth Ceremony, The 42 Negative Confessions, and the Weighing of the Heart. Along with spells to keep away all the beasties and baddies of Duat (the underworld). What is surprising is how often olfaction is alluded to in these ceremonies and spells.

In the Ani Papyrus, the most extensive and intact Book of the Dead found, there is a feast of scent references. Ani, a new New Kingdom scribe, commissioned his beautifully decorated Book of the Dead to help guide him in the afterlife. In a treatise comprised of only 68 modern pages, the nose or nostrils are discussed six times. The burning, offering, or smelling of incense occurs 12 times. Six times the odour of the Blue Lotus is used to invoke holiness. The sweet-smelling breath of the gods has been alluded to 8 times. Discussion of the savoury smells of cooked meat happens four times. Fragrant unguents appear six times. Myrrh unguent is named explicitly as a needed item for performing the Opening of the Mouth Ceremony, which was a mandatory ritual for the dead to be able to continue into the afterlife. The Duat of the Ani Papyrus is a visually and olfactory magnificent place.

Instead of stating that the gods of the Duat bow before Osiris, it is phrased thusly:

“The Companies of the Gods praise thee, and the gods of the Duat smell the earth in paying homage to thee”

Ani Papyrus, approx. 1250 BCE Hymn of Osiris, E.A. Wallis Budge translation

More than just the descriptive landscape of the Book of the Dead, the gods recognise and evaluate human souls based on their smells. Here Anubis ushers Ani into the Hall of the 42 Judges and tells the judges he is a pretty good guy; after all, he smells godly.

“The god Anpu (Anubis) spake unto those about him with the words of a man who cometh from Ta-mera, saying, “He knoweth our roads and our towns. I am reconciled unto him. When I smell his odour it is even as the odour of one of you.”

Ani Papyrus, approx 1250 BCE, Chapter: Entering into the Hall of the Ma’ati to praise Osiris Khenti-Amenti, E.A. Wallis Budge translation

While most people couldn’t afford a custom-made book like Ani, these Books of the Dead were bought during a person’s lifetime, often with blank spaces in the spells to fill in with the owner’s name. They would have read over the scroll for years and committed it to memory.

Kyphi was burnt in every temple and most homes three times a day (morning, noon, and night). The Blue Lotus bloomed and perfumed the air every year after the inundation. Egyptians would have experienced these fragrances their whole lives. They would have associated them with Ma’at, divine cosmic order. The same order makes the Nile flood yearly and the sun travel across the sky daily. I like to think that these familiar odours, written about so frequently in the Book of the Dead, comforted those contemplating their deaths. Even in the world of jackal-headed gods and golden boats that flew in the sky, the kyphi still burned, and the Blue Lotus still bloomed.

We may never know for sure how the Egyptians felt about these smells. We do know that an ancient Egyptian would have understood their world through olfaction as much as any other sense, maybe even more so. Beyond the material world, they would have worried about the weight and scent of their souls in the afterlife.

Nuri McBride is a perfumer and writer, examining the cultural history of floral scent.  She is the Program Curator for the  Scent & Society lecture series at the Institute for Art and Olfaction.

It may be time to start thinking about other plant-based coffee-like beverages. As the effects of climate change increase, wild coffee species are under treat and many coffee-growing areas, growing primarily Coffea Arabica (arabica) and Coffea Canephora (robusta) are having to move to higher altitudes, if possible, or switch to growing more tolerant crops. As a result, coffee prices are going up and future shortages are likely. Should you be looking for a coffee alternative, one that really boosts your health without caffeine? There are a lot of plant-based beverages to try.

In her 1829 book The Frugal Housewife, Lydia Maria Child, advocated drinking a beverage made of roasted peas (English or Garden varieties) rather than expensive coffee. It’s amazing what’s in a little green garden pea.The diminutive legume is packed with vitamins A,B,C and E, zinc, and other antioxidants that strengthen the immune system and reduce inflammation, helping conditions such as diabetes, heart disease, and arthritis. They also contain carotenoids lutein and zeaxanth—great for eye health.

Consider growing a larger crop of organic garden peas this year and give a warm pea drink a try.

Pea Coffee

Take dried peas (English or garden varieties) and roast them until they turn a dark cinnamon brown.

Crush and grind as with coffee beans and brew.

Tourists from across the globe flock to Tennessee to experience the world’s country music capital and its renowned high-quality whiskey. But as Katie MacDonald and Kyle Schumann see it, an ubiquitous invasive plant species known as kudzu could become yet another state export.

MacDonald and Schumann, who became architectural fellows at the University of Tennessee Knoxville in 2019, are the co-founders of After Architecture, an architectural studio established in 2012, whose work “responds to and confronts environmental crises.” Central to their approach is repurposing invasive species for architectural use due to the immense harm caused by conventional building materials to the environment. 

Spoiled for choice in Tennessee, where invasive species run rampant, kudzu, an invasive vine, was a seemingly easy pick.

“When you talk to people in Tennessee and the surrounding states, everyone seems to have a story about kudzu,” says MacDonald. “We liked that there was a kind of recognition of kudzu. And if we could develop a way to work with kudzu, there’d be a resonance between the material itself and the public’s experience.”

Seemingly innocuous, the trifolate-leaved vine with sweet-smelling blooms was imported from Japan as an ornamental plant for the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition. Initially used as a forage crop, farmers were later encouraged to grow it as a solution to soil erosion. In the south, it found the perfect habitat — a little too perfect. 

Kudzu slithers across the earth and blankets anything it touches: grass, trees, gardens, porches, street signs, power lines, telephone poles, eventually choking the biodiversity out of an ecosystem. The hardy plant grows at the head-spinning pace of a foot per day and spreads at a rate of 150,000 acres yearly. Extremely dogged, it can adapt to most soils and climates. 

The U.S. Department of Agriculture declared it a pest weed in 1953, yet efforts to rid the country of kudzu have been largely futile, leaving individuals as well as government agencies frustrated. 

Joshua Lee, an assistant professor of architecture at Carnegie Mellon University, says he spent over $15,000 to fight a kudzu infestation in his yard in Pittsburgh, a frazzling process that included using a stump grinder to desecrate the roots before spreading black plastic across the yard for about a year. “It still comes back,” he chuckles. 

These ruthless qualities have inspired poetry and fiction paying homage to its relentlessness. Renowned Georgia poet James Dickey wrote Ode to Kudzu about the exploits of the plant in the south, in an exaggerated manner. 

In these qualities, however, MacDonald and Schumann saw a potential building resource capable of replacing the carbon-intense materials typically used in construction. “We were thinking about the hardiness. It’s really a persistent material — that’s what made it such a challenging invasive species. It’s really hard to cut away, it rolls so fast, it entangles itself with things,” MacDonald says. 

Schumann adds: “We used it as basically fibrous and loose wall assembly, and it was kind of similar to the idea of OSB (oriented strand board) which is a really standard building material.”

After Architecture demonstrated this potential with Homegrown, an art installation at the Knoxville Museum of Art in 2020, a culmination of their fellowship in Tennessee. Homegrown mimicked the skeletal form of a building. Roofless, with cut-outs for windows and a door, it was predominantly constructed with kudzu, along with a few other local invasive species like bamboo and forestry waste, all bound together by a bio-based adhesive. The 10-by-10-foot room wasn’t just an art installation, it was a reimagining of how we could build without carbon-intensive concrete, steel and aluminum. 

“When we work with something like wood, we take something large and then we cut small pieces of it away to make it into a kind of unit,” MacDonald says. “So, it’s a subtractive process. With Homegrown, we were interested in using kudzu as an ingredient and an additive formation — so adding material together instead of subtracting material away.” 

Kudzu, a “natural fiber,” is touted as a replacement for carbon fiber. Additionally, it can be used in panel materials such as sheetrock or drywall, which is typically made from gypsum that is mined from the earth. “If we can make thin panels, then they could essentially replace the interior wall surfaces,” Schumann says. 

Finding such replacements is an environmental imperative. Building materials and construction, otherwise referred to as embodied carbon, are responsible for roughly 20 percent of global emissions. These numbers may rise even further. According to a 2020 report, one in every three houses to exist in 2040 is yet to be built, and 20 years on, this is expected to double, per a Global Status Report. 

However, After Architecture’s work with kudzu is still very much experimental. As illustrated with Homegrown, it appears and feels different than most construction materials: a bit fuzzy and soft, as opposed to hard and flat. Echoing the researchers’ sentiments, Lee believes that the public is more than capable of embracing an unfamiliar aesthetic, considering the historical evolution of architecture.

“We have gone through periods of shagged carpets in the 1970s, so I don’t think it’s as foreign as it might seem on first appearance,” he says. He foresees industry and regulatory entities as more likely to resist a new,  biobased alternative to ostensibly safe, carbon-intensive materials, especially in a “highly litigious society” like the United States. It might take years of testing to ensure safety and financial viability to prospective investors. Application for the plant to be used in construction is still in development. 

“We don’t need to farm material, we don’t need to mine material,” MacDonald says. “We can actually harvest it from places where it’s already become out of control.”

Tolu Olasoji is a contributing editor at Reasons to be Cheerful. A journalist who writes on sports, culture, technology, innovation, policy, social issues, and their intersections, he is based in Lagos.

This article previously appeared in Reasons to be Cheerful.

When I read that more than a billion animals had lost their lives to bushfires still raging in Australia, I froze, staring at the incomprehensible figure on my screen. A sort of sinking feeling came. Scientists made the estimate from the numbers of animals that have died from previous land-clearing practices. It is dismaying to try to imagine all that those fires are consuming. They’ve scorched 72,000 square miles of land and over 2,600 homes, and killed just under 30 people. The animal death toll is in the trillions when you include the invertebrates. But it lifts me up to see that, with some recent rain, the situation in Victoria and New South Wales, the region in eastern Australia affected the worst, looks to be improving, however slightly. What’s more, an ancient and critically endangered species, rooted in New South Wales’ Wollemi National Park, survived the blaze.

The Sydney Morning Herald had the story as: “Incredible, secret firefighting mission saves ‘dinosaur’ trees.” The conifers, Wollemia nobilis, are uniquely wild in Australia and grow in a narrow and inaccessible gorge, the precise location of which is hidden from the public to ward off tourists and contaminants. The trees number less than 200. The effort to safeguard them from encroaching flames “was like a military-style operation,” Matt Kean, New South Wales’ Environment and Energy Minister, told the Herald. Aircraft dropped water bombs and fire retardant, and helicopters sent firefighting specialists down to irrigate the forest ground, moisturizing it to slow the fire’s spread. “We just had to do everything,” Kean said. Wollemia nobilis is like a “living dinosaur.”

Scientists have studied fossilized Wollemia dating as far back as 200 million years ago. This tree has, in a sense, outlived the dinosaurs. Encountering it can be like seeing a dinosaur-era insect encased in ancient amber brought to life. The tree’s resin (the precursor to amber) is useful to paleontologists for its chemical similarity to ancient amber (fruit flies, for instance, decay rapidly in pine resin but very slowly in Wollemia resin). Science News reported that the “living fossil” is one of the species researchers most worry might die off due to the bushfires. Having the “dinosaur” tree disappear from its natural habitat would be a blow to the amount of wonder in our world.

Calling the trees, as The New York Times did upon Wollemia’s discovery, “living fossils,” fails to appreciate them. They aren’t relics of the past, evolved for a distant time. They’ve continued to evolve, an example of adaptability; in short, they are amazing survivors. In a Nautilus article, “The Rise and Fall of the Living Fossil,” Ferris Jabr spoke to Alan Turner of Stony Brook University, an expert on fossil crocodylians and their ancestors. “I think the term ‘living fossil’ should be retired,” Turner said. “It does little good because it is almost always based on oversimplifications. ‘Living fossils’ often are judged based on some notion of overall morphological similarity. That was the case with crocs. If you squint, these various lineages all sort of look the same, but the details are all different. It ignores how evolution works on multiple levels. I wouldn’t miss it.”

Charles Darwin was playing around with the phrase in On the Origin of Species. He made clear that “living fossil” was his “fanciful” way of highlighting the more extraordinary or strange beings he encountered—ones like the lungfish and the platypus that look like they might genetically link species disparate in space and/or time. “Overall, I think the term hurts more than it helps people’s understanding of evolution,” Jamie Oaks, a phylogeneticist at Auburn University, told Jabr. “Just because a species looks similar to fossils from many millions of years ago certainly does not mean that it has not evolved. The term ‘living fossil’ is often used in cases that are simply explained by low diversity; just because there are only one or several species that represent a taxonomic group does not mean they are evolutionarily static.”

Darwin’s coinage was both “poetic and memorable,” Jabr wrote, and quickly found broad acceptance. “‘Living fossil’ was no longer a passing phrase; it had become a powerful concept shaping scientists’ attitudes toward modern species. If certain creatures were frozen in evolutionary time, the reasoning went, then they could be our windows to ancient epochs of life.” But nature doesn’t put evolution on pause. “It’s true that the living descendants of early animal lineages can teach us about their ancestors, but the idea that any species alive today has stopped evolving is simply false,” Jabr wrote. “In the last 10 years, scientists have liberated numerous species from this evolutionary straitjacket, including coelacanths, horseshoe crabs, cycads, lizard-like tuataras, and tadpole shrimp.”

When we look at a crocodile, a “primordial dragon,” Jabr wrote, “we should recognize one of evolution’s greatest survivors—a compatriot of the planet every bit as modern as we are.” The same goes for Australia’s conifer trees. With a little help from their human friends, they can continue to show us, as Jabr wrote, “There are no living fossils. Fossils cannot change; life must.” 

Brian Gallagher is an assistant editor at Nautilus.

This article previously appeared in Nautilus.

Since animals roamed the Earth and swam in its oceans, nature’s apothecary has been the local forests, fields, streams and seas. From my high school days of growing food and medicine in garden beds on some asphalt outside a trailer where we met for afterschool programming, to years of learning, working, and teaching in agriculture, my mind opened to the possibilities of how gardening can benefit health.

During the COVID shutdown when I found myself without a job and feeling a lot of emotional stress, the shift I needed came again from creating a garden, this time my own medicinal garden. As I learned as much as I could about the healing qualities of plants, I began to focus on the ones that seemed to suit my needs best. The botanicals I selected for my own mental and physical healing were ultimately influenced by one book – The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Healing Remedies by Shealy C. Norman, which guided me through the world of natural healing.

Surrounding myself with healing plants became one of my most restorative times and increased my passion for living a healthy life. Once again, planting seeds and nourishing their growth helped strengthen my beliefs in the benefits of gardening.

I realized just how essential herbs are and have been since ancient times. The ancient Egyptians and forth century BC Greek physician Hippocrates recommended willow tree bark for pain relief. In 1915 Bayer started selling it as aspirin. Bulgarian folk stories tell of rubbing the flowers of snowdrops containing galantamine on their foreheads to cure headaches. It’s now used as a treatment for Alzheimer’s disease.

As I gained experience in growing medicinal plants and making remedies, the possibilities of what a home medicinal gardener can mean expanded. We are stewards meant to help preserve and grow life, and just like the weeds, we can thrive, no matter what community or land we find ourselves in. Even though many of us live in areas of shrinking greenspaces, we must create our own environments and support the spaces bearing fruitful plant life. If you don’t have access to a ground area, a rooftop or a rare apartment backyard, there are many ways one can create a home healing garden that will serve as a physical and mental support. It can be container gardening on a small fire escape, or a window sill.

Envision your plant list as a reflection of your personality and needs. Allow the scents, colors, and textures you love to guide what you would like to see in this home oasis. You are creating a space meant to support you, your friends and neighbors. Start by creating your plant list and designing your garden with the space that is available to you.

You will want medicinal plants with the properties you need, such as easing pain, fighting inflammation, clearing congestion, aiding digestion, drawing out infection, or helping with relaxation. Look for the plants you can support the most easily with your growing conditions. Your herbal apothecary can be grown in containers placed indoors or outdoors, on porch, patio, stoop or fireescape. Growing medicinal plants in containers makes them portable and easy to adjust if in need of more or less sun exposure. If needed, consider installing a grow light.

Plants like basil or parsley added to one’s daily diet can help with circulation and heart issues. All have great healing qualities and are easy to grow, harvest, and use to make teas, poultices and salves. For a salve, combine the herb with beeswax, shea butter or a hardy oil like coconut. And there is nothing like drinking homegrown herbal tea.

Here are some great starter plants:

Lemon Balm
Applications: digestive upsets, anxiety, insomnia, sedative, flu and colds.

Chamomile
Applications: tension, anxiety, insomnia, stomachache, herpes simplex

Mint
Applications: digestive aid, upset stomach, headaches, cold and flu, cramps, tension, nausea, immune system support, congestion, athletic stiffness

Lavender
Applications: gentle antidepressant, burns, stress, sleeplessness, heartburn, indigestion, nerve pain, joint pain, muscular cramping

Oregano
Applications: sore throat, sinus inflammation, pain-relief, arthritis, wound healer, H. pylori infections, candida, athlete’s foot, skin infections, breathing issues, salmonella, staphylococcus infections, cold and flu, gum inflammation, digestive upset abdominal gas

Rosemary
Applications: memory, concentration, hair loss, stress, digestive aid, cancer prevention

Let this garden be a way to give to yourself, to the soil, and to your neighbors by sharing produce, dishes, cuttings and seeds of what you’ve grown.

Let healing start at home.

Erika Maria Aponte is an artist and farmer born and raised in The Bronx, New York. She received a certificate in agroecology and sustainable food systems from CASFS. Her work explores sustainable agriculture through community while exploring self expression through music, fashion design and food.

When I started my first garden, it was outside my high school in The Bronx with a group of other students. None of us really had experience growing, and we had not been taught to question where the food in the supermarket came from or how it was made. We built garden beds on some asphalt outside our building and learned what it takes to grow in the city. Connecting with people over a labor of love and learning what it means to grow food and medicine from a seed opened my mind to the possibilities of growth I had never imagined for myself at the time.

Many natural remedies passed down through generations have been lost alongside shrinking greenspaces. After years of learning, working, and teaching in agriculture, I started to feel like there was nothing I could do to fix things. After COVID, I was let go from my job and reflected on whether I wanted to continue to work in agriculture. It felt like my efforts would never be enough to preserve the traditions and land we were losing so quickly. I decided to leave New York City, and along the way, I came across an amazing book called the Illustrated Encyclopedia of Natural Remedies by Shealy C. Norman.

I spent the next couple of months combing through this book, learning about my ailments, expanding my knowledge about the benefits of growing plants and the tradition of natural healing. This was one of the most restorative times of my life, and it helped me strengthen my beliefs that growing is for connecting, healing, and nourishing, not just for profit. I believe we reflect the beauty that exists naturally in the world. If we would like to see more, we must cultivate the abilities that are needed to create and sustain that beauty. Then, we will always be able to grow and thrive, no matter what community or land we find ourselves in.

There are many ways one can create a home garden that will support their needs. This is truly a restorative way of healing in community because you will reflect the natural beauty that exists everywhere. In New York City, whether it’s in the rare apartment backyard or a small fire escape, allow the scents, colors, and textures you love to guide what you would like to see in this oasis that will support you, your friends or neighbors.

Envision your plant list as a reflection of your personality and needs. Some lemongrass in the fire escape could be a hint to your friends of your sweet and patient nature. I know so many people back home in The Bronx struggling with stabilizing their blood pressure. Plants like basil or parsley added to one’s daily diet can help with circulation and heart issues. Let this garden be a way to give to yourself, to the soil, and to your neighbors, sharing cuttings or dishes with what you’ve grown.

Below is a guide that will help you come up with a plant list and design your garden using the space you have been given.

A GUIDE TO STARTING A SMALL
HEALING GARDEN

This guide will help you in starting a garden in your
small yard or fire escape that will support some of
your physical and mental needs. By the end, you’ll
have what you need to start setting up your space
for some plant babies that will reflect your care
through their natural medicine and beauty.

1.

WHAT’S THE SPACE LIKE?

Amount of growing space: (eg.: 2ft by 5ft fire
escape?)
Sun Exposure:
(full sun or part shade?)

2.

WHERE ARE YOU LOOKING FOR
SUPPORT?

List your symptoms and whether you’re
looking to welcome pollinators to your
community.

3.

LIST YOUR PLANTS

Start with a small list of plants so you’re leaving
room for gradual growth. Shoot for 5-10 plants that
will be remedies for your symptoms or bring more
birds and bees to the neighborhood.

4.

WHEN/WHERE TO PLANT THEM

Practice companion planting so plants can
thrive collectively. Group your full sun plants
that need daily watering in the same spot.
Get those needing some shade and drier soil
together in a darker space.

SEED SITES!

Seed Savers Exchange Heirloom Seeds

In Northern Virginia’s land of condominiums, subdivisions, expressways and international airports, Earth Sangha’s Wild Plant Nursery lies tucked between public playing fields and a strip of woodland. In a quiet corner, it stands out as a leading source for native plant conservation. Anyone visiting each month might see over 350 varieties: ferns, milkweed, asters, boneset, sunflowers, blazing star, beebalm, phlox, violets, goldenrods, and a host of other forbs, plus grasses, shrubs, vines and trees. Almost all are propagated from seeds or spores gathered, with permission, from local parks, right-of-ways or other wild areas. In our community, if an especially rare native species needs to be sought out and saved, we know who to call: Earth Sangha.

“With extraordinary spirit” describes the amount of enthusiasm and dedication to conservation present from the nursery’s early beginning in 1977. Co-founders Lisa and Chris Bright drew inspiration from Buddhism, with a first precept, “Let us not harm but respect all forms of life.” Earth Sangha operates as a nonprofit, dedicated to growing native plants, restoring native plant communities and removing invasive species. With Asociación de Productores de Bosque, Los Cerezos, the group also supports Tree Bank Hispaniola in the Dominican Republic. There they focus on protecting tropical forests and growing local native trees, while sponsoring farms that produce shade-grown coffee within forest fragments or in restoration areas. Scientific research guides all activities, and staff and volunteers come from diverse backgrounds. Many hands contribute to the nursery’s successes. 

For people interested in propagation techniques, ongoing projects and a history of the nursery, conservation manager Matt Bright offers easy-to-understand descriptions of restoration work. Most projects occur on public land, working with teams from local government agencies to identify vulnerable native plants and select new locations for healthy growth.

He explains, “Over the past few years we’ve worked with Fairfax County Park Authority on some careful reintroduction work for Pycanthemum torreyi, which is a globally rare mountain mint species. It’s only found along the eastern U.S. It’s rare or threatened in every single state in which it occurs. There, I think, is only one population in Fairfax County…We’ve grown out some [of this species] to re-establish it into areas where it will hopefully suffer from fewer human impacts, and there will be ongoing management to prevent invasives from crowding it out.”

He draws a comparison with efforts to preserve Solidago rigida, (stiff goldenrod) a species that is rare in the state of Virginia, although more common in the Midwest and Great Plains states. The Washington metropolitan area is on the edge of its natural range.  Bright says, “We [in Fairfax County] may have unique genetics relative to other populations, in part because our populations are kind of fragmentary… we want to preserve those.”

In Fairfax County, Solidago rigida plants grew on a plot of parkland with utilities easements. Botanists had visited the area and said the plants were at risk from disturbance. Earth Sangha worked with the county by collecting seed to grow out and establish a new population. The model for reintroducing rare species is, as Bright says, “not just to amplify it and to get it out everywhere, but to make sure we have specific, proper habitat – maybe historically documented areas where it’s been.”

Documented histories of native plants in Virginia have existed since the 1700s. One of the first written catalogs was John Clayton’s Flora Virginica, published by Gronovius in 1735.

And there is the Smithsonian, in Washington, D.C., which Bright explains, “has the foremost American collection of pressed plant species… These are not just tools for botanists to true up plant ID but also historical records. So once a botanist takes a sample of a plant and they press it and they mount it, it also gets a card, saying what it is, who collected it and where they got it from. There are stacks – sheets and sheets of these things that you can look up. A lot of them are digitized now. You can get a sense of ‘Hey, we used to have this stuff around here and now we don’t.’”

He points out that all of us can make our own observations. People don’t have to live in a location for very long before they recall something they used to often see that now seems scarce.

For groups that want to head off destruction, Bright has several recommendations. Work with partners on restoration. Reduce stressors by removing invasive plants, so that native species have access to nutrients, light and pollinators. And Bright also points out the need for a community effort to reevaluate the balance of parkland between recreation and conservation activities. With very tight budgets park authorities have to focus on revenue generating activities. Bright adds, “Passive conservation doesn’t generate revenue, and it shouldn’t. We shouldn’t charge people to go for a walk in nature. The reality is that there is a lot of pressure from a lot of different constituents.”

He sees a role for everyone. “Native plant conservation on private property, that is people’s homes and gardens, commercial landscapes, HOAs, condo associations – all of that – is an absolutely necessary component… that will help reconnect our wild populations with each other.”

He goes on to say, “A lot of the species that evolved to cross pollinate with each other are susceptible to inbreeding depression, that is when populations get fragmented, the whole population size drops, and the plants as a whole become less healthy. The first signs can simply be low seed viability and that’s something we’ve experienced as growers. Some plants don’t form a lot of seed, and the seed they do form tends not to germinate. We think these are warning signs.” 

In expanding suburbs with new roadways, parking lots and more paved land, pollinators like bees, butterflies and other insects cannot visit one group of plants and then easily move to the next. Plants begin to lose their genetic interconnection. In Fairfax County, public parkland makes up a little under 10 percent of total land area. Bright advises, “Ecologists like E.O. Wilson and Dr Doug Tallamy say that a third to 50 percent of our land mass must be in conservation – has to be in native cover… We absolutely need to see that in [more] pollinator gardens and monarch way stations.”

Despite challenges, his message continues with a hint of optimism. “We’re not where we need to be… Our hope has always been at Earth Sangha, that if we can make plant conservation work here in an area where most of the economics are pointing us in the other direction – toward cutting down more forest, toward removing more wetlands, toward paving over our meadows… if we can hang on to as much diversity as we can, then there is hope for communities elsewhere in the country where the economic trends are not pointed so dramatically toward paving every square inch.” 

In our own communities, each of us can play an important role.

Visit Earth Sangha: www.earthsangha.org.

You will also want to checkout their Native Plant Compendium: https://www.earthsangha.org/compendium

After working as an architect and teaching design workshops for children, Liz Macklin became a Virginia Master Naturalist. Now she joins other volunteers in local parks pulling invasive switchgrass and looks forward to autumn mornings volunteering at Earth Sangha.

I would like to thank Lisa Bright, Matt Bright, Sarah Mard, Katie Danner and Jan Siddle for their help in making this article possible.