4 Louisiana Herbalists, Spanning Generations
Local herbalism traditions endure into the future
Botanical Legacy
At seventy-eight, Louisiana legend Dr. Charles Allen is more active than many twenty-somethings, up before sunrise to trek across his sprawling Allen Acres property and photograph moths on far-flung observation stations. (He’s currently photographed 1003 unique species.) Then depending on the day, he may be leading an edible plants class on his twenty-six-acre outdoor classroom, heading off to speak before a master gardener’s club, or holed up in his home office working on his next book. He could be flying out of state to headline at a conference or accepting yet another botanical or ecological award.
Allen’s childhood spent working on the family dairy farm set the tone for such a productive life. “Everybody on my mother’s side had fifteen or twenty cows,” he said. “We woke before daybreak to milk them, so the milk could be taken into the co-op.” When Allen arrived at Louisiana State University to work toward his bachelor’s in forestry, he easily landed a job at the on-campus dairy.
When he graduated, the country was still embroiled in the Vietnam War, so he enlisted in the army. “I had a lot of time to think while I was in Vietnam,” he said. “I realized what I’d enjoyed most at LSU were my plant ID classes. I decided when I got back, I’d learn all I could about plant identification.”
Allen’s grandmother was part Native American and schooled in herbal remedies. “I learned from watching her and became interested in finding the things that grew near me that were edible or medicinal,” said Allen. He went on to complete a master’s in botany and a PhD in biology. Over the years, he’s shared his passion for all things botanical with thousands of college students as a professor at several colleges around the state. Since his retirement from the state university system, Allen hosts about one hundred plant ID, foraging, and edible plants classes a year at his home, Allen Acres, where he and his wife, Susan, also run a homey bed and breakfast.
“I had a lot of time to think while I was in Vietnam . . . I realized what I’d enjoyed most at LSU were my plant ID classes. I decided when I got back, I’d learn all I could about plant identification.” —Dr. Charles Allen
Each class concludes with a tea tasting from plants foraged on the property that day and the offer of a shovel for students to take home any plants that caught their fancy. He’s written five books on Louisiana flora, his most popular being Edible Plants of the Gulf South, and contributed to many books and botanical articles. Over the years, he’s served on countless boards, held directorships, and spoken to botanical and environmental groups across the US. Today, people flock to Allen Acres from around the world to study at the feet of this true Louisiana icon.
“I highly recommend that anyone interested in learning about plants begins in their own backyard,” said Allen. “Make a list of the plants there, then in your neighborhood, then in your town. You’ll be surprised at how much you already know. That’s how I started. I rode up and down the road. When I saw a plant I didn’t know, I’d go home and look in my plant books to see what I could learn about it. Today, there’s AI and plant-ID apps, but nothing beats first-hand experience and a few good plant-ID books.”
Roots, Unburied: Corinne Martin
For seven generations, Corinne Martin’s family has lived in Hahnville—a place where summers sent the children out of the house at first light, dashing back for lunch, then back out, not to be seen again until dark. “We lived a block from the intercoastal canal and spent our days swimming and exploring in the woods,” she said. “It was wonderful.”
Now at seventy-six, nature is still where Martin can best “find herself”. But it wasn’t until her young daughter developed a debilitating case of asthma that she began to view the natural world around her as a source of healing. “I’d never really heard of herbalism,” she said. “When a friend suggested I try treating my daughter with medicinal herbs, there was a huge learning curve for me.”
Martin bought her first herbal book, Dr. John Christopher’s The School of Natural Healing. The 700-page tome was $40—a fortune at the time for a single mother. But for Martin it was worth every penny. “I started to use the medicinal plants I was learning about to help my daughter,” she said. “It allowed her to have some power over her condition. She’d say, ‘I feel really congested and I need a breathing tea.’ We could harvest the plants together and she could help me prepare the tea. As a kid, healing was suddenly something she had in her own hands.”
Continuing her studies, Martin was amazed to one day realize that within a three-mile radius of her home, she could identify 150 different healing plants. “Everywhere I walked, I started looking to see what was growing around me,” Martin said. "It was exciting to orient my life that way and I’ve done it ever since.”
That was over forty years ago. Martin went on to earn her clinical herbalist certification at The Institute for Traditional Medicine in Santa Fe, and to teach holistic and integrative health studies at the University of Southern Maine School of Nursing for almost twenty years. She’s written two celebrated books on medicinal herbs and is working on a third.
“Everywhere I walked, I started looking to see what was growing around me . . . It was exciting to orient my life that way and I’ve done it ever since.” —Corinne Martin
Her latest offering, Louisiana Herb Journal, is a love letter to her home state. Not only does it contain a wealth of information about native Louisiana herbs and their healing power, but with each herb the reader is invited into Martin’s world as she strolls the levee with her dog, Bodi, in search of boneset plants or foraging fleabane flowers at the ferry landing with a boisterous clutch of cousins. Her engaging prose is followed by each herb’s botanical name, common names, habitat, identifying features, harvesting guidelines, any associated folklore, herbal recipes, and a photo. It’s part science and part enchanting storytelling.
Even as Martin embraces herbal alternatives, she warns against getting stuck in the mindset that medicine has to be 100% alternative or 100% conventional. “We’re lucky in this country to have access to a spectrum of intervention,” she said. “We have options. Healing doesn’t always have to be something a medical expert does for you. You can be an active participant in your own healing and herbs can help you do that. But when we need conventional intervention, we’re fortunate to have access to that as well.”
Empowered by Nature: Brandee Santini
It was January 2009, and Brandee Santini was ready for a change. "Here I was, climbing the corporate ladder and successful in my career, but I wasn’t enjoying my life. I had no time with my daughter. She was being raised by babysitters. I thought, ‘I’m not doing this anymore.’”
Santini reconsidered the things that brought her joy, reaching back into her childhood. Growing up in Pascagoula, Mississippi, she would spend every second she could with her grandfather, a botanist who owned a plant store, and her grandmother, who she said “could grow anything”. But her eureka moment came the day when she walked into the home of a friend and saw a jar of calendula-infused oil.
“It was so beautiful sitting on that windowsill in the sunlight,” Santini said. “I was hooked.” So, even as she continued working her corporate job, she began growing herbs and experimenting with making herbal infusions, decoctions, tinctures, and elixirs. She started tentatively selling her recipes at street fairs and festivals and eventually convinced her husband to sell everything, downsize, and move back to his hometown of Hattiesburg, Mississippi.
From that day forward, Santini sunk any money she made selling her herbal remedies back into her fledgling business and any free moments into teaching herself about the healing power of herbs. They were lean years. When her marriage came to an end, Santini called her dad, a longtime resident of Olde Towne Slidell. “I told him I had to get out,” she remembers. “His exact words were, ‘I’ve got your back.’” Santini and her daughter relocated to Olde Towne. Her father loaned her some money and told her to get what she needed to start the business she wanted.
That initial output was under $5,000. But the real investment, Santini said, was the time she spent educating her customers and building their trust, teaching about the benefits of using products that are all-natural, plant-based, not tested on animals, and ethically sourced. “Once people connected with me they were willing to listen and learn,” she said.
“Education is the foundation of everything we do," —Brandee Santini
Santini’s business crept along from occasional street fairs and festivals to a tiny storefront with a handful of customers, and eventually, to the rambling, historic building that now houses her Green Oaks Apothecary, a hub of Olde Towne and a godsend to those seeking herbal alternatives. But even as her apothecary proffers room after room of herbal teas, vitamins, supplements, essential oils, candles, plant-based body-care products, local art and jewelry, fair-trade goods, crystals, CBD products, and an absolute cache of dried medicinal herbs, the real value is still in the education Santini and her staff provide. She’s hand-selected credentialed young people who are just as passionate about herbalism as she. “Education is the foundation of everything we do,” she said. She installed an educational herb garden in the side yard and invites customers on walks around the neighborhood pointing out medicinal plants growing through cracks in the sidewalk.
At forty-seven, Santini’s goal is to inspire the next generation of herbalists. “I still learn something new about herbs every day,” she said. “I hope I can say that when I’m ninety-seven.”
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Looking to the Future: Alexis Badon
The first time Alexis Badon saw a passionflower growing wild, it blew her mind. An avid camper, she’d spent a lot of time in the wilderness growing up. But the sight of that single Seussian blossom when she was sixteen stopped her in her tracks. She dashed home and started researching the plant online. Her search revealed that in addition to being fun and funky-looking, passionflower blooms, leaves, and stems have been used to treat anxiety, insomnia, seizures, stomach problems, burns, heart-rhythm problems, hemorrhoids, pain, menopause symptoms, and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). And that was just one plant.
Eager to learn more, Badon began spending all of her free time researching and educating herself about herbal medicines. She especially connected with Stephen Harrod Buhner’s Herbal Antibiotics and Herbal Antivirals series of books. She signed up for a Rosemary Gladstar’s Science and Art of Herbalism course and completed her herbal certification. She ordered small amounts of one hundred different herbs and began experimenting with flavors and flavor combinations.
It was an engrossing hobby. But it became more than that when her three-year-old daughter developed a swollen gland. “It was the size of a grapefruit on the side of her neck,” Badon said. “It was a terrifying thing to see on your child. I started giving her cleavers I’d foraged, and the gland was back to normal in three days.”
Now at twenty-eight, instead of studying and experimenting with herbs as a hobby, Badon has made them her main focus. She chose the name Magnolia Moon Herbals for her business as an homage to her Southern heritage, starting off small in her hometown of Lafayette. She began selling medicinal teas, frozen lemonades, and herbal coffees at festivals around the country from Florida to Ohio, from Arkansas to Texas, and at stores and cafés in Lafayette.
“It’s thrilling to see how eager people are to learn about herbs . . . I’m passionate about balancing traditional and herbal medicine." —Alexis Badon
She established a presence at the farmers market where her regulars line up for concoctions such as strawberry jasmine green tea, dragon fruit and satsuma lemonade, lemongrass mint limeade, frozen watermelon hibiscus lemonade, lavender lemonade, and other surprising combinations.
On her website, Badon sells dry tea blends, tinctures, herbal elixirs, balms, and salves. “I started my business with $300 and just grew as I was able,” she said. Like Santini, Badon says the most important part of her job is education. “It’s thrilling to see how eager people are to learn about herbs,” she said. “I’m passionate about balancing traditional and herbal medicine. My best friend from childhood is a pharmacist and I was excited to hear she was taught about healing herbs in pharmacy school.”
Badon is fostering the next generation of herbalists, too. “My nine-year-old daughter loves plants and loves knowing what plants are edible and or medicinal,” she said. “And I love encouraging that passion in her.” Badon just welcomed her second daughter, so there’s one more future herbalist to inspire.