Wort Issue 4: Winter '25

Cassidy McKenna – Pivoting to the Peripheral: What Medical Herbalism Training Programmes Might Learn from the Plants

An essay exploring the current approaches to sustainability and allopathic medical care taken within Medical Herbalism training programmes and questioning whether they equip current students for the realities of practicing in a time of ongoing genocide and ecocide under late stage capitalism.

Catherine Glavina – The Little Fir Tree

(Poem) Inspired by a fairy story by Hans Christian Anderson.

Hannah-May Batley – Patterns of Perception

An experiential journey with Blackberry: a story of how surrender to being with other kin and to the senses disrupted the epistemological frame and provoked the emergence of new forms of perception and sensuousness.

Isa Symancyk – Of the Heart: Linden and Cordials for Modern Times

This article delves into the original applications and historical conception of cordials as a heart-affirming medicine and offers an understanding of why this neglected preparation might also suit today’s challenges.

Kudzai Ruzvidzo – Growing Munyadzagudo Red Maize

Growing and preserving indigenous Red Maize for food, drink and medicine in Masvingo district, Zimbabwe.

Marco Tenconi – Cultivating Chaga: Reflections on New Frontiers in Mycoforestry

Drawing on recent research for an industry report, this article looks into the cultivation of the medicinal Chaga fungus in open woodland settings, reflecting on some of the philosophical and moral questions surrounding this nascent area of mycoforestry.

Plants, Mushrooms and Resistance Collective – Project Focus: Plants, Mushrooms and Resistance

Supporting herbal knowledge and resilience in radical movements in Europe through autonomous collective gatherings for herbalists and mycophiles to connect, learn together and exchange.

Sophia Handler – Reishi for Life and Death: Connecting with the Humans Between It All

Reflections on meeting Reishi, a facilitator of transition and connection with cycles, informed by experiences of being supported by Reishi during pregnancy and motherhood, and inspired by the work of Dominik Einfalt, who collaborates with Reishi to create a new rite for death and burial.

Tsitsi Mareika Chirikure – Echoes of an Uprooted World

Tracing an evolving relationship with Himalayan balsam, a plant that has been deemed ‘invasive’, this piece asks if and how we, in this society, can find kinship with the lives we have been taught to uproot, and how this can transform our relationship with plants, place and each other.