A few weeks ago, I can across a stand of plants that I don’t get to see very often: Texas Madrone trees (Arbutus texana). These small, beautiful trees are native to the Texas Hill Country, growing on limestone hills from here to west Texas, southeastern New Mexico, and down into Mexico. Texas Madrone bark is smooth to the touch, pinkish, and it darkens and peels away from the tree as it ages. The leaves are simple, thick and leathery.
A few days before I found this small but healthy stand of small Madrone trees, I had been wondering about my “UTI Free” formula. “UTI” stands for “urinary tract infection”. I designed the formula to help clear out a bad UTI, a common problem experienced by many women [especially those in their 20s] and the formula works quite well. However, the formula relies on Manzanita (Arctostaphylos sp.), a wild medicinal plant that I gathered last time I was out in Arizona, but which does not grow wild here in Central Texas. What was I going to do when I ran out of Manzanita? What could I use locally that would have the same kind of astringent effect on the urinary tract?
When I came across the Madrone stand, I knew right away the answer to my question. Madrone leaves can be substituted for Manzanita (as well as for its better known sister herb Uva-Ursi) in teas, sitz baths, and yes, tincture formulas such as my UTI Free formula.
I carefully gathered some leaves – just a few from each tree, so few that no one would be able to tell that I had even been there – and took them back to my office kitchen to tincture them. Once again my beloved plants had come to my aid!
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