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Ohia Ash shown to Improve Ohia Health
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01-28-2017, 02:36 PM
Apologize in advance as This may be a little off topic.
An Interesting Hawaiian legend here that involves the Ohia tree and it's many beautiful red or yellow flowers. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/10...98664.html 
01-29-2017, 01:28 AM
"Apologize in advance as This may be a little off topic.
An Interesting Hawaiian legend here that involves the Ohia tree and it's many beautiful red or yellow flowers. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/10...98664.html" Thanks for your post and the link, Gypsy. It brings up a question which I'm sure you can answer: "If you want to protect yourself and your family from the lava flow, you have to pay your respects to Pele, the volcano goddess. According to local legends, if you see a beautiful woman with long, flowing hair or an older woman with long, white hair, you must greet her with aloha and offer her help or respite. To really get on her good side, however, you have to visit her at Halema#699;uma#699;u crater and give offerings of food, flowers, and gin." Why would Pele like gin? It was invented long after she grew up, so why did she develop a taste for it? Thanks in advance for your answer. 
01-29-2017, 03:26 AM
quote: Maybe Pele is open to new tastes.An essential oil extracted from juniper berries is used in aromatherapy and perfumery. Being a sophisticated lady she would know these things. Her work is plenty hot and a taste of the berries clears the smoke from her throat and adds a pleasant scent to her as well!
Slow Walker
01-29-2017, 05:14 AM
Slow Walker, It sounds like JBF gets overwhelmed by the forest. That's too bad. Re: Making my mind up. My perceptions are based on collected wisdom from a lifetime of listening. My ideas must shift with more stream lined info. Every bit helps and I welcome it. I used to feel overwhelmed by the Ohia forest blight as well. Having a useful path to follow helps with that. I am posting all field notes in the hopes that someone else will notice some nuance of this project that I missed or bring expertise on board. Re: the devil in the details: tried sifting charcoals out of powdery white ash and just treating a patch of forest with the fine substance. The previous trees that got treated with the charcoal bits mixed in with powder are looking healthier, going back to using ash, as ash is.
Hey Gypsy & Tom! So ON topic. Like the King James Bible, that beautiful Hawaiian legend was probably reiterated to satisfy the needs of the last practitioners of that oral tradition. Jon Cruz sings a song about how his Tutu liked her Poi real sour....Hawaiians were no strangers to fermented beverages but maybe the author preferred Gin? Just a guess but isn't that how all knowledge is handled? Through extrapolation with varying degrees of success and failure? Lore and Science aren't so different in that regard. Maybe we should take this experiment to the folklore department and see if they can sneak us some ROD test kits out the back door. Re: talking to the forest spirits, I love the trees like I love family and my family is on board. My lovely father who has been immersed in the sciences most of my life, told me yesterday to go out into the forest and play some music for the trees! Maybe I'll go out and strum some "Island Style" on the guitar: We go grandma's house on the weekend clean yard If we no go, grandma gotta work hard You know my grandma, she like the poi real sour I love my grandma every minute, every hour "Protoplasm, the translucent living matter of which all animals and plant cells are composed, is in a state of perpetual movement. The vibrations (from music) picked up by the plant will speed up the protoplasmic movement in the cells. This stimulation then effects the system and may improve performance, such as (but maybe not limited to) the manufacture of nutrients that develop a stronger and better plant." https://dengarden.com/gardening/the-effe...ant-growth Apparently the plants in these studies liked the violin and Indian Devotional music the best. I have a great double record by Yehudi Menunin (violin) and Ravi Shankar (sitar) that might heal the forest! We need to have a Raga Rave in the forest. Using that same logic, my violin playing is so bad, I might be able to kill all the Ambrosia beetles within earshot  Problem solved! There are many who also feel that singing/chanting to the volcano is a vibrational exchange. Even mysticism can be broken down into wave form sound theory. There are connections wherever we look. Thanks you guys for checking in.
01-29-2017, 05:19 AM
"A basic tenet of oral Native American cultures is that if there is a poison(in the natural world), the cure is often within ten feet of you, you just have to look for it."
Rattlesnake in the desert seems to disprove that one pretty quickly. Maybe it's only the ones who actually found a cure within 10 feet that live to pass on this ancient wisdom.
01-29-2017, 06:57 AM
quote:
Slow Walker
01-29-2017, 08:25 AM
Pauly! Allow me to prove you otherwise
The practice of cutting open the bite and sucking the venom out (and spitting) was known to work if caught in time (if snake is venomous swelling starts in 10 minutes). THEN application of a Poultice of common Plantain of the genus Plantago which has 200 different species ranging all over North and South America (strangely not listed in the Wikipedia ethnobotony link above/ not related to the banana of the same name) applied to the wound and also taken internally for snakebite venom. Refined Plantain makes a source of psyllium which is used in GI tract to absorb toxins and is sold in most health stores. Eating Plantain has been shown to counteract anaphalaxis or life threatening allergic reaction.https://aromaticstudies.com/plantain/ Not surprising to me, Charcoal is also a common anti-venom also applied to open bites as a Poultice and taken internally as well to combat the destruction of red blood cells, I found one article below: http://www.charcoalremedies.com/snake_bites Charcoal is known to counteract most poisons and drugs, and can be used to counteract over doses. Relatively little scientific data exists because drug companies aren't going to fund anything that shows the buying public what is actually free through liberal fire use. Next time you get a fire ant bite I suggest you run out and buy some activated charcoal for $8 or $12 at "The Natch" and give it a try. Re: The 10ft rule, if you lived anytime but this last century it would be unheard of not to tend your own home fires or have one nearby if you were out roving for Europeans or the First People. Does anyone have any actual data on whether this method v. modern anti-venom method had a higher survival rate? Probably not, but I would guess that the success of either is pretty dependent on timing. If a hiker gets bitten in rattler terrain, his strongest chance for survival is if he is roasting marshmallows with an ethnobotonist with powerful lips and a sharp knife that can stave off his untimely death until the helicopter arrives assuming there is a helicopter and that the hospital isn't out of antivenom when he arrives. Peace pipe anyone?
01-29-2017, 08:32 AM
Slow Walker, Ha Kosher is pretty strict! Might even be more strict than science! It is frustrating about the University, thank you for clarifying, however they aren't the only 'game in town' so to speak. It is really curious that they don't feel at least a little territorial over an issue raging in their own back yard and would be willing to let these obvious experiments slip into the hands of an outside Institution which is what it may come to sooner than later. Very odd.
01-29-2017, 10:23 AM
Maybe to offer a little balance in the JBF-bashing going on, in the early days of the recognition of the ROD, surveys done on the locations where ohia were going down indicated that much of the die-off was occurring along the Kilauea rift zone where there were recognized surface fractures and ground cracks. JB and others who had the data suspected that it could be associated with any number of processes that might be occurring at those locations ranging from ground movement along the fractures causing stresses on the root systems, or possibly thermal or carbon dioxide emissions from the fractures could be responsible. Hence their early interest in the root systems. They were, and continue to, follow good scientific protocols: systematically gather and interpret observational data, form a hypothesis, and develop new observational data to test and/or disprove/modify that hypothesis. Going off in twenty different directions based on uncertain/conflicting/undocumented anecdotal claims isn't good science and, when you have limited time and limited resources as most University researchers do, it isn't productive.
And your glowing opinion of folk-medicine notwithstanding, although some have been shown to have a biochemical basis in reality, most were unproductive if not counterproductive... If bitten by a snake, I'd much prefer anti-venom to shamanism any day.
01-29-2017, 12:26 PM
Geochm; thanks for your input about Dr JBF. Considering all the scientist bashing that's happening in the world, my own frustration was starting to exhaust me as well. His experiment sounds fascinating. I felt sure that 34 years of uninterrupted volcanic activity played a part in why the trees are susceptible to illness and you have given me a better basis for that idea. Dr. Friday took a shot across my bow by claiming without any investigation that the ash treatments wouldn't combat fungal or parasitic blight. He should have abstained from commenting if he didn't care to look into it. Otherwise it would seem he was trying to shut it down. Why?
Your statement that: "Going off in twenty different directions based on uncertain/conflicting/undocumented anecdotal claims isn't good science and, when you have limited time and limited resources as most University researchers do, it isn't productive." ...is a little confusing. I wasn't aware that twenty other hypothesis have been lobbed at the University, there has been no news of that. As far as I know, my suggested protocol is the only working theory (and I do say theory) of how to cope with ROD that residents can actually access. I have never claimed that applying ash does anything more than slow down the associated disorders of ROD (a lot). You say that a "good scientific protocol (is to): systematically gather and interpret observational data, form a hypothesis, and develop new observational data to test and/or disprove/modify that hypothesis. That is why we are looking for qualified candidates. Thanks for the advice. Re snakebites; I'm pretty sure if you were camping in the Grand Canyon with your family and one of you got bitten by a rattler, you would remember charcoal and be glad that anyone gave you this 'unsupported data', a Shaman, a Plumber, a Go-Go Dancer, whomever. As far as I know, Botany is a respected science, my layman's grasp not withstanding. Regarding your views on medicinal herbs or compounds like charcoal/fixed carbon that "....although some have been shown to have a biochemical basis in reality, MOST were unproductive if not counterproductive." You must have some stats to back that up, that "....MOST were found to be unproductive." How many tests were done and by who, and WHY is it that plant products used by Big Pharma are valid and all others are not? Can't have power in the hands of the people now, it wouldn't be as profitable. You do realize that most allopathic medicines are made from plant derivatives. Aspirin is refined Willow Bark. Penicillin is a mold. Etc... I'm sorry I offended you via your beleaguered friend. I'm more sorry how political it is trying to save the forest. As a chemist I would think you would be fascinated by aforementioned possibilities. Hold firm, invaders are at the walls! |
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