This is one of my favourite overview videos of Vetiver Grass, Chrysopogon zizanioides; a sterile plant with a myriad of uses that grows in areas with humid/wet Summers (or a water phytoremediation plant in hot, dry areas). Mainly used as erosion control on heavily degraded lands in full sun as a pioneer to native revegetation.
This video used to be hosted on Vimeo but has been reuploaded to YouTube, hence the lack of views.
If you have any questions on how Vetiver works, ask away. Happy to answer all of them.
We have grown these as part of our traditional medicine stuff for a long time. These plants are pretty awesome :) Glad to see them catching on in the wider world.
Are you distilling from the roots yourself? At scale or small?
In our traditional medicine there’s no distilling as far as I know. The root is ground up to form stuff. The roots are also dried out and woven into mats for people to sleep on but that’s quite expensive. I remember us having a small rug made of this as a child.
Thank you. Do you mind, if it’s not too forward, defining “your traditional medicine” so I can look up some info to expand my knowledge?
I live in an area where it’s difficult to retrieve roots (soil type) so I use the tops only, plus we have no culture around things like that. I’ve used the tops for brick-making but I understand the roots are a superior addition for cob. The picture is an oven render that has shortcut grass in it.
Sure, it’s called Ayurveda, traditional Indian medicine. It’s part of my culture but I don’t really use any of it because I feel most of it has no scientific basis and no scientific exploration has been done in the present to identify why it might work or what active components are. It saddens me when people eschew lifesaving medicine for this stuff.
That looks really cool :) I can confirm that the roots are tough as fuck. They have extremely high tensile strength. If you dry them out and make something out of that fiber it will be extremely nice and smell really cool!
On a side note if you take a small bit of roots+leaves together from the main plant and plant it separately, that can grow into another plant. We usually just pick one plant and split it into ten or so pieces all of which are planted again.
https://www.planetayurveda.com/library/ushira-vetiveria-zizanioides/
Copy. Here’s a link for anyone reading and what a list of cures! From a fragrant oil to all of that. I was familiar but was hoping how you use the root without distillation was something clearer.
I once separated a large plant and broke it into 144 separate slips without counting crown pieces!
I didn’t want to recommend something that I hadn’t tried myself :)
This is something my grandmother used to make that is quite delicious: https://spicykitchen.net/recipe/khus-syrup-ramacham-sarbath/
It’s all good. Thank you for that.
Having soaked Vetiver slips for a decade now, I can break that recipe down in terms I understand. A hint of oil in sugar water.
Did you like it? Is it something you would seek out?
This isn’t oily at all while drinking. It’s more like the aromatics and flavours extracted in sugar syrup.
Frankly it is amazing and somewhat universally loved by people here. To tell you how much, my partner had us go on a two hour adventure through Amsterdam because she found a restaurant that had it and really really wanted to drink it, in her words :)
@Parsnip8904 @Treevan
OT but I found that some elements of Ayurvedic meal preparation to be quite helpful and aligned with recent research around SIBO (small intestine bacteria overgrowth) and helping with restoring function of the migrating motor complex. (The West calls this ‘mindful eating’; I also started preparing a lot of Jain style recipes.) As with many non-Western traditions, often the grounding in research is either independently discovered or never attributed. I wish I knew of some ‘bug bounty’ like program where people could ask for the studies they wish to have done directly.
I think the problem in a sense is that what the west recieves is a very watered down version.
The ground reality is often unfortunately different. I know 5ish people who tried to heal cancer with ayurveda and died, low 20ish of those who tried to cure diabetes with ayurveda and died from complications and the list goes on. Had to take my grandfather to the ICU because of side effects from one of the ayurvedic medicines interacting with some cardiac meds he was prescribed.
Ayurveda like other traditional medicine is basically a compilation of trial and error herbal recipies whose efficacy have not been tested. Some of it works, most of it probably doesn’t. People here treat it as real medicine and some kind of faith healing which is frankly kind of sickening.
Recently there has been a movement by the fundamental part of the political spectrum to get ayurveda practitioners to be certified be real doctors and even perform surgeries. These people believe humors cause diseases and have less knowledge of biology and physiology than highschooler.
Sorry for the rant :( It just makes me sad sometimes. I’m sure there are useful bits in ayurveda like you’ve found.
@Parsnip8904 Absolutely - I used a mixture of western medicine (which is great for acute problems) and I took inspiration from Ayurveda for lifestyle changes that helped. There are people who misuse alternative medicines all around, and it is not great I agree. That’s why I went to a doctor who had actually gone to medical school, *and* was familiar with additional alternative therapies that are finally getting some of the studies you and I both want them to have. Unfortunately such practitioners appear to be rare.
Quite true. I wish the goverments of these countries would invest in bringing these medical practices upto the rigor required by modern medicine. Unfortunately most seem to be moving in the opposite direction.