Story and Photos by Sophia Gambino
I walked into Jane Desotelle’s plant room, greeted warmly by her and her plants. “Would you like some tea?” she asked. I gladly let her pour me a cup of wildflower tea. Her sunroom was well lit in the late-afternoon light, around us were plants high and low, capturing a small part of her collection during the winter months.
Desotelle has spent her entire life connected to the earth. Having seen and experienced different facets of life, she has made a point to live her life in a way that harms the earth as little as possible. “I ended up in a business, but I’m very ethical about it, everything. You know, in fact, one of the PowerPoints I have is ethical collecting,” Desotelle said. Her business, Underwood Herbs, promotes botanical education. As an experienced forager who lived off the grid for 35 years, Desotelle spends her days in Plattsburgh gardening, reading and educating others about herbs.
Origins of Underwood Herbs
Having graduated from SUNY Plattsburgh with a philosophy degree, Jane was not always set on becoming an herbalist. Post-grad, she worked on a grant at a crisis center where she found her calling.
“At the crisis center, I met a woman who was having problems. She was, like, hemorrhaging every month, and she would miss a day or two of work,” Desotelle said. “Her doctor said, ‘Some women are like that, you just gotta deal with it.’” Desotelle, however, saw her suffering and recommended plantain leaf as an herbal alternative. “And so I said, ‘Well, you know, there’s this weed that might help,’” she said.
Surely enough, the plantain leaf relieved the hemorrhaging, so much so that Desotelle’s colleague offered to buy it from her. Desotelle, being the person that she is, insisted that her colleague learn to forage. “She said, ‘I need some more, and I’ll buy it from you.’ And I’ll say, you’ll buy it from me? I’ll teach you! I’ll show you the plant, and you can go out and get it yourself. It’s probably in your backyard,” Desotelle said.
The colleague insisted on paying Desotelle, who realized that she had the opportunity to create a business with her knowledge. “So I’m like, alright, I have only got a few more months left on this grant, there’s no prospects of any work opening up,” she said. Desotelle’s colleague was an artist, who encouraged Desotelle to open up a business and helped her design the logo.
Wild Foods and Medicinal Plant Education
Since its beginning, Underwood Herbs has been an outlet in the North Country community where Desotelle provides herbs and knowledge to curious foragers and plant enthusiasts. She also offers a work-study program for botany and environmental science students at SUNY Plattsburgh, allowing them to pursue their interests in the field. Students from other majors have come to the Plattsburgh botanical sanctuary to help out, saying “I need to spend time outdoors and feel useful” as Jane puts it.
“It depends what they’re interested in. Some are more interested in wild foods, because they’re hikers. They want to know in case they get lost or whatever, you know, what’s edible and what’s poisonous,” Desotelle said. Foraging in the North Country is relatively safe, as most poisonous plants are easily identifiable to the educated eye. “There are very few plants out here that can really make you sick. It’s good to know them though,” she said.
“Some volunteers were interested in the medicinal uses,” she added. Desotelle combines wild ginger root with blackberry root to make a tea that helps with colds. She also grows elderberries. “You can make a tea out of the flowers, and it’s good for fevers. That’s one of the first things I learned from my grandmother in Ohio,” Desotelle said. Desotelle attributes her love for gardening and foraging to her childhood and family. Her grandmother’s maiden name was Underwood, the inspiration for Desotelle’s business name.
“Elderberry, the berry syrup is really good for sore throats and coughs,” she added. Unfortunately, New York state does not recognize clinical herbalists. Desotelle still goes through the process of educating and is a certified herbalist and wild foods expert. “I feel like I’m a pretty good resource… to help other people,” she said.
“You know, some of them are just going through chemotherapy, and they wanna try and get through it a little better, to help with the symptoms,” Desotelle said. Through her business, she is able to provide herbs that aid with pain and symptoms of illness.
Herbal medicine prevents sickness and chronic ailments by building up the immune system, she said. Desotelle shared that her family, on both sides, has a brutal history of liver problems linked to disease and cancer. “So I’m always very careful about my liver, and the number one herb for livers is dandelion,” she said. Desotelle drinks dandelion tea regularly to prevent suffering from complications with her liver.
Nutrition is important in any healthy lifestyle. Herbs aren’t often recognized for their nutritional benefits. “Stinging nettles are super nutritious. It’s like a really dark green plant to begin with, so that kind of is a sign” she said. Full of vitamins and minerals, nettles are more nutritious than spinach, students have told her.
Desotelle grows and harvests nettles in her own half-acre plot of land. “So I dry nettles, they crumble up very easily, and you can not only just make a tea with it, but you can throw it in soups and stews and all sorts of stuff. Like you would with parsley,” Desotelle said. “But it’s even better to eat than parsley. A lot of minerals, it’s really good stuff.”
Stinging nettles are just one of many herbs that provide incredible nutritional value. Desotelle understands well what each herb provides. “I have very few vegetables growing out there because over the years I’ve learned that a lot of these herbs that I’m drinking the tea of, have more nutritious value than the vegetables that we’re growing,” she said.
Flavor Guide
Dandelion roots offer health benefits, but they make for bitter tea if not prepared properly. Desotelle expressed that even though the taste of some herbal teas is unattractive, drinking them is worth it for the health benefits. Desotelle provides a flavor guide to her customers so they can make taste judgments for teas they haven’t tried yet.
“People always ask me what teas taste like when I’m selling them, right? So I tried to describe the flavors in, but a lot of them just taste like green tea,” Desotelle said.
Sustainability
A part of Desotelle’s values is sustainable collecting and lifestyle. Being a resourceful and mindful person, Desotelle learned to forage within her rural community. “I told everybody, I’m very ethical about my collecting.” Jane said that she never collected from land without the owner’s permission. “One of my power points is a presentation on ethical harvesting.”
Desotelle takes the opportunities to forage where the farmers have unwanted vegetation. While foraging too much from one area can be harmful in nature, Desotelle found that in these cases, she could get a lot at once from land that was set to be otherwise cleared.
Even so, healthy foraging habits can help restore growth. “There’s actually patches that I picked off of for decades, that improved after I collected from them,” Desotelle said. She has been growing on the plot in her backyard since she was a child, so she understands how to keep soil healthy and successfully fill her garden every year. “I also opened the Plattsburgh Botanical Sanctuary for guided tours of the approximately 400 varieties of plants, and have given away many plants.”
Keeping a garden helps protect the environment because you are sourcing your food locally, and growing it with your own resources. Desotelle’s garden, also called the Plattsburgh Botanical Sanctuary, is a member of the United Plant Savers Sanctuary, a program around the world that helps protect medicinal plants. Her garden is the vehicle for her mission to impact the environment as little as possible. Her mission is expressed through the way she lives her life.
Somebody came to the door of Desotelle’s sunroom while we were talking. “People donate their wreaths when they’re done with them,” she said as she got up to take it from them. “A future balsam pillow,” she added. Leading a sustainable life takes creativity and resourcefulness. For Desotelle, this lifestyle is where she is most comfortable.
“You get outta college, you get a choice right? You can go find jobs that pays well, you know, some people just want really good paying jobs. … You know, to me it was about quality of life,” Desotelle said. She found quality not in material wealth, but in nature and present living.
“It’s healthy to be thankful,” Desotelle said. From the hours I spent with Desotelle in her sunroom talking, I had no doubt that Desotelle was fulfilled with her life. While materialism shapes the values of many, Desotelle’s simpler approach has created a life of presence and spiritual wealth. Very down to earth, literally and figuratively, she said, “It makes me feel good, good quality of life. I like working outdoors.”
