This botanist feeds on wild plants

In April 2023, you decided to go to Saint-Jacques-de-Compostela by following “”The Plant Chemin»». What were your motivations?

I wanted to find myself first, refocus, while being open to meetings. An expression often came back to my ears: “feeding on the way”. However, the end of April is a period that my gourmet botanist taste buds would not miss for anything in the world! So I was going to do this pilgrimage with the plants: they would accompany my detoxification-and perhaps my “purification”.

How did you draw your route?

I haven’t traced! It was also one of the facets that attracted me in this path: the fact of being able to recover entirely to him. I use cards in my work as a botanist for floristic inventories; So, this time, I left without a card, neither topoguide, nor watch.

I just knew that the path passed through Puy-en-Velay, Conques, Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, Burgos and Saint-Jacques-de-Compostela. I left me, in Saône-et-Loire. The rest, I discovered it over the steps.

What plants have composed your meals?

It depended on the regions crossed. In all, more than one hundred and fifty species have opened my appetite on this path! First of all, those that composed the basics of my salads, soft and abundant: white, lampsane, wild lamb’s lettuce, young linden leaves, etc. Most of the others came to small touches according to meetings, for their aromas, their color or their medicinal virtues.

You explain that the pilgrims, formerly, fed on wild plants on the way. Do you know more about this question?

There are very few written sources because in the Middle Ages, individuals who sometimes ate wild plants rarely knew how to write. The texts of doctors like Paracelse (1493-1541) nevertheless suggest these uses.

Personally, I do not think that pilgrims had equal knowledge on this subject, nor that they ate dozens of species, but that they were confined to those they knew and used in them. For example lamb’s lettuce, white dying, sorrel or nettle.

With what plants have you treated yourself along the way?

I didn’t really need to take care of myself, but if we consider that, as Hippocrates said (around 460 BC-around 377 BC), food is the first medication, so yes, the plants took care of me. By the deputation they orchestrated, I found myself in much better form!

On the other hand, I was able to treat other pilgrims. For example, bleeding with the millefeuille Achilée, or an inflammation that had prevented a pilgrim from opening the eye for three days with the Grand Plantain.

You write that plants are “”Masters of meditation»». What do you mean by that?

Plants relate to the sacred in several ways. Some are symbols like Mary’s rose or palm. But it is above all the harmony that they release that moves me: the finesse of their construction, from their young shoots which seem fragile, light as a weightless movement, their apparent stoicity full of life.

They carry the mystery of the universe, something invisible that creates beauty and generosity. Yes, some plants come from the scent of the sacred.

You have also met plants whose name evokes the path of Saint-Jacques. What are they? And what is “”The Plant of the Compostela Chemin»» ?

There is the Jacobée, the “Saint-Jacques grass”. But it’s the big plantain, Santiago Major – pardon, Plantago Major – which is the plant of the Compostela path. First, because it pushes where the ground is packed: the pilgrims therefore make it grow unconsciously, and then put it in their shoes to reduce inflammation. It is the best anti-inflammatory and anti-histamine (which calms the allergic reactions) wild

By eating it, I told myself that he made me less allergic to the world, meetings, weather, and I felt much more open! I then realized that the star of Compostela was hidden in its leaves – like vegetable shells.

Have you cut your brush on the way?

At first, yes. But when I pick plants, I often forget my stick. I then take the first branch that arrives in my hand, if possible fragile enough to adjust it to my size, and not to tend to lean on me too much.

In Puy-en-Velay, I dropped my branch in front of a shop; I found it in the hands of a schoolboy, who was walking with the weight of his schoolbag. I left her, as in a relay, telling him that it was the pilgrim now! I then found the stick that accompanied me to Compostela.

What wood should you take if you want to follow your example?

We must not be fooled: we may spend hours there, it is as much the stick that presents itself to us as we choose it. One can also wonder who is that!

In any case, botanist advice: a stick is made of wood. So, if you lose it, if you break it, if you throw it away, it will surely generate a more positive future than if other materials were made, and you will easily find another. The sound and touch of wood are also unique.

What places, from the point of view of your meetings with plants, have marked you the most?

Aubrac, Meseta and the Galician coast. The Aubrac, because the natural dynamics of the peat bogs, and of the plateau as a whole, reflected my state of mind and led me to understand that I accomplished this pilgrimage to mourn my mother.

The Meseta, paradoxically, by the absence or scarcity of wild plants, replaced by cultivated cereals, where I started to be entirely directed to Compostela.

Finally, on the Galician coast, each plant was of special importance, a new meaning compared to my pilgrimage.

Can you tell us about a meeting that took place around a plant?

One evening, between the Margeride and the Aubrac, I meet two women, a German and a Swiss, who did not find a cottage for the evening. We therefore share the refuge of the hamlet of the Clauze where there are a few covers and a wood stove.

When I realize that they have nothing to eat, I go to pick something to make a salad and nettles that I prepare in an omelet, with eggs that a grandmother sells us. We really enjoyed ourselves! In Saint-Jacques-de-Compostela, I met one of them, Barbara, who admitted to me that it was the best meal she ate on the way. This time, it was she who invited me to the restaurant …

Are there famous plants on the way?

The Puy-en-Velay rose, for example, whose history is quite unknown. Some trees are also the subject of donations, such as “the tree of pilgrims”: a large oak of the Gers countryside, at the entrance to a campsite in donativo Appointed the “Camp-Hostel”. Finally, who did not think of the plants burning in the botafumeirothe large pendulum censer of the cathedral of Saint-Jacques-de-Compostela?

And can you cite some toponyms inspired by plants?

We pass the Franco-Spanish border to “La Vallée des Ronces”: Racesvals, or Roncevaux in French. La Ronce also embodies this edge between two circles, two worlds or two countries. Further, at the foot of the Oca mountains, the Camino francés Pass through San Juan de Ortega, that is to say “Saint-Jean-de-l’Inie”, who created a hermitage here. This place is a welcome refuge, surrounded by nature, before the endless Meseta.

Can you give some advice to pilgrims who would also like to feed and treat yourself with plants on the way?

Be sure of your choice, 200 %, before eating a plant, and multiply the sources of learning, because faults can slip into certain works. Look precisely each plant, and focus on the textures, the tastes that you are not going to fail to discover: I think we feed first on the beauty and plurality of the forms.

Finally, respect the place where you pick: it welcomes you and other pilgrims may need it after you. Not to mention our friends the bees, to which we must also leave flowers!