Moving at the speed of the plant
Seed project updates & photos from the field, plus a new free conversation to watch today
The last month has seen Peru in dire straits as the errant cyclone Yaku flooded the entire North Coast. In the Andes, the wet season kicked off late but has been making up for it with heavy rains and landslides. Huachuma doesn’t wait, though, and neither do we. This is the weather that grows fruits.
The yearly cycles of flower and fruit are steady, predictable, and impossible to subvert. In the age of artificial grow lights, greenhouses, and fertilizers, we forget that wild plants cycle to the beat of a larger drum. They receive too much water at some points in the year, and too little at others. They grow slowly and gain resilience each year, and by the time they are full grown they are full of concentrated, wise medicine. They become guardians and communicators which speak of the health of the entire ecosystem.
Your donations to our Go Fund Me have come just in time to sync up with this year’s fruit-collecting season. They have allowed us to collect thousands of seeds in partnership with the communities in our network. It has been a fruitful project in more ways than one.
Old timers shared stories of being sent by their mothers to gather full baskets of sweet, juicy San Pedro fruits when they were children. Some wondered if we’d lost our sanity, because they had never heard of anyone starting a cactus from tiny seeds, only from cuttings. Two wonderful curanderos joined our Advisory Council.
One of our top priorities for this project has been to collect seeds from locations which are facing extreme harvest pressures. Not all San Pedro is created equally, and the differences between varieties only an hour’s walk from each other can be enormous. This great variety is what has created the new culture of “cactus collecting” in North America and Europe. Some of these practices have unintended consequences, however.
The most devastatingly overharvested areas where we collected seeds were also home to some of the most coveted “clones” that exist in modern cactus-collecting circles. The cuttings which are most internet-famous for their potency have left entire populations of old-growth plants cut to their roots, harming their ability to regenerate.
Though all species of San Pedro are recognized by the Peruvian Ministry of the Environment as “endangered in the wild,” the government is doing little to protect these areas. We are collaborating with communities in overharvested areas of the wild to collect endemic seeds from remaining old-growth plants, raise the seedlings, and return them to their communities of origin.
Your donations have also provided immediate reciprocity to communities for their Huachuma fruits in the form of paper, notebooks, and drawing supplies for rural children without access to school supplies.
Reciprocity to the plants is as important as reciprocity to communities, and offerings to the plants and land are central to how we work.
The project has been a good reminder that plants move at a middle speed: slower than humans, faster than stone. There is a time to enjoy flowers, and a time to harvest fruits, and a time to do the looong sweet work of processing seeds. We have to listen deeply to understand and abide by the natural pace of the plants.
Right on time, we are exactly halfway to our financial goal to finish this project… $2,500 of our $5,000 goal has already been raised! A huge thank you to each of the 28 incredible donors who are making this seed-collection project possible, and to the many people who shared the fundraiser. You have made such a big difference to people and plants this month.
If you’re considering donating but haven’t yet, your support now would come at just the right time to help us finish this project before fruiting season ends.
In other news, we had a surprise volunteer gathering at the Huachuma Collective garden last month. Five wonderful men helped Josip to pot 200 heads of San Pedro for our next plant donation in collaboration with the community of Huaca Tres Marias. They also prepared potting soil, bathed all the cacti in tobacco tea to protect them against scale bugs, and had a fire ceremony with Josip when all was said and done. Thank you Paul, Sebastian, Jeremy, Farid, and Daniel!
That’s all for this month, folks. Lots of work left to do. Onward and upward!
In love and community,
P.S… a NEW conversation with The Master Plant Experience is airing TODAY, Monday April 17th, for just 24 hours (my apologies for the late notice). Register free for this wonderful summit and let us know what you think of our heartfelt, deep-diving conversation with the brilliant and sensitive Dr. Maya.
P.P.S. Want to learn more about San Pedro’s conservation status? Check out this video from November 2022.
Thanks for including your conversation with Dr Maya, whom I met many years ago. You express yourselves so simply and beautifully ♥️