#plantwisdom

Gerbera daisy also known as Transvaal daisy or African daisy is a brightly coloured flowering plant that is easy to grow and maintain. The plant enjoys the sun but not its heat. It prefers moderate temperatures and moist soil. 

It was named in honour of a German botanist and medical doctor Traugott Gerber (1710-1743) who travelled extensively in Russia. Gerbera’s however, don’t grow in Russia due to the extreme weather. They are native to tropical regions of South America, Africa and Asia. They are popular as decorative garden plants or as cut flowers, often finding their way into bouquets and flower arrangements of all sorts. 

Gerbera can be grown from seeds or from division. Seeds take longer to grow but are a cheaper option. Seeds have to sprout indoors before transferring them outdoors. Division involves separating a bud or bloom from the parent plant by cutting the root apart. 

LEARNING         

🍃🌿BAY LEAVES🌿🍃

✨ Burning a bay leaf under a bright clear sky with your intent on it (luck, happiness, money, ect.) and throw the ashes to the wind it will guide the manifestation into the set motion.

✨ Take a handful of bay leaves and place them inside a wish box to remove curses.

✨ You can sleep with a bay pouch under your pillow to facilitate lucid dreaming.

✨ It is a powerful protector of homes by placing on the door.

✨ It's role in the kitchen is to protect the whole family. When we add it to a stew, we can previously enchant it to fulfill this function.

✨ It is a solar plant. It protects from negativity, and is useful for purification before rituals.

“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.” – John Muir

Plants are often identified by two sets of names: “scientific” and “common”. The scientific name comprises the Genus species of the plant in question while the common names are the local nomenclature. Neither of these naming systems are random. Both the scientific name and the common name (or, more often, names) are packed with meaning… they can reveal important information about how a species of plant or animal is related to another, what defining physical features set them apart as a separate order or genus, what area is habitat to that particular species, or how a certain people encountered, interpreted or used that particular species.

Let’s take, as an example, the plant pictured here. Do you know it as worry vine? Or as vervine? What about as Stachytarpheta jamaicensis?

Although many sources traditionally pit scientific names as being at odds with common names, the truth is that neither paints a complete picture without the other. Both are essential to understanding not just how a particular plant relates to others but how it relates to the people who lived alongside it.

In this case, the scientific name tells us several things: The genus Stachytarpheta derives from the Greek ‘stachys’ meaning ‘spike’ and ‘tarphys’ meaning ‘thick’, and refers to the thickened flower spike which is a common trait specific to that particular genus (Plant Net). The species jamaicensis tells us where the plant is likely to be found and, possibly, where it was first described. This, in turns, gives us strong clues as to how it may have been transferred to Cayman if it was not originally found on our shores.

The common names (of which the local names are but a small selection of the many aliases it has across the Caribbean region) tell us how the plant may have been used and where the people who used it may have settled from. The name worry vine hints at its use as a bush medicine to treat nervousness and anxiety, while the name vervine hints that the early settlers of Cayman may have recognised it as having similar traits to Verbena officinalis or vervain, an old world species that is common across Europe and is, indeed, in the same Verbenaceae plant family.