Image by Goran Horvat

In This Article:

• How do trees hold ancestral and emotional significance?
• Why is the healing power of trees vital for well-being?
• What role do oak and holly trees play in personal and cultural identity?
• How does the spiritual connection to nature help with grief and memory?
• Can trees act as emotional and energetic guides in urban and rural life?

Welcome to the Healing Power of Holly and Oak

by Stephanie Rose Bird.

The African American spirit of survival has always been strong. While some make their way in the urban jungle, my grounding and centering remain in the forest, as lush and mysterious as it is forgiving yet foreboding. I’m hoping my story builds an understanding of the potent heal­ing power of trees, not just for African-descended people but indeed for all, wherever they are rooted.

Trees of Life

When my citified relatives (as we thought of them) came and went from our home during summers and on weekends of barbecuing chicken, ribs, and freshwater fish like largemouth bass, pike, sunfish, and pickerel caught by my dad, they took off from our humble dirt road to asphalt, from three swamp oaks at the beginning of our property. Wacky and weird as those trees were, they are still the emblem of home emblazoned in my mind’s eye.

To this day, that trio of oaks bears the marks of my siblings and me as we played games growing up, numerous dog and cat scratches here and there, dings from cars and pickup trucks coming a little too close to the trees in their hurry to return to the bright lights of the big city and the lure of towns nearby. For me, oak became and remains the tree of life.

A Single Majestic Tree: Salem Oak

For African people, trees served as visual markers and potential medicine (such as slippery elm or pau d’arco), as well as shade for cooling, with breezes from the leaves welcome.

Trees are my way of knowing: where I am, where I am going, where I have been personally and historically. When I was growing up in Salem County, one of the annual field trips during grade school was to see our old oak tree, with its ever-widening girth, to hear tales of how it began its life over four hundred years ago.

Salem County is rich in history as one of the oldest counties of the original thirteen colonies; it was established in 1694. The tree is believed to be the place where John Fenwick signed a treaty with a local native group, the Lenni Lenape, to purchase the land. Since 1681, the Religious Society of Friends (an offshoot of the Quakers) has owned and maintained the land where the oak tree grows. It has been a Friends burial ground for hun­dreds of years.

At the seat of the county, the Salem Oak Tree remains an anchor to major towns of the area; people die, stores and factories close, but the tree remains an emblem of continuity in an area seated on the shore of change.

Living among the Oaks

I have trees and nature within both my name and the map to my self. My middle name is Rose, after my godmother; my maiden name, Hunt, and married name, Bird, are also evocative of the natural environment.

Though Hunt is not suggestive of woods by itself, our original name is Hurst, an English topographic name for someone who lived on a wooded hill. The German topographic name is derived from the Middle High German hurst, meaning “woodland” or “thicket.”

My connections do not end in New Jersey. The state tree of Illinois, where I currently live, is also a very real reminder of home: the oak. Outside my home grows an oak that is weird, wacky, and wonderfully twisted. That oak tree lets me know the time of day by the shadows it casts, the season by how it speaks, and the mood of our neighborhood through the akashic energy it emanates.

Pilsen Neighborhood in Chicago

For years I internalized all these connections to the wood, but I didn’t quite understand the feelings until I moved to a loft in the inner city, in Chicago’s Mexican American Pilsen community, where there was barely a tree over five years old—at least not around my block or the ones surrounding it in the 1980s.

In my attempt to set up a new home I tried growing tomatoes on the balcony of our loft. The landlord was cul­tivating what she thought of as a Bohemian look and was in full support. Tomatoes are a traditional food in South Jersey, so much so that they con­tribute to its nickname, the Garden State. There is even an oversized, juicy type called Jersey tomatoes, and, as Aunt Eddie demonstrated on her back stoop, you just had to add a dash of salt and sometimes a bit of mayonnaise and you had yourself some good eating.

But these stock products of home would not grow on that Chicago bal­cony. I literally thought I would die along with my tomato plants. Not only would my plants not grow on the fire escape, but just exactly how would I know when it was winter, when spring was just about to return, or even when the sun was about to set, without trees?

Eventually, after trying out several types of plants including several temperamental Nordic pines, I reached out to ficus; with the right temperature and a bit of sun, ficus grows anywhere, even inside a loft in Pilsen.

Holly (Ilex spp): Tree of Memory

Having heard that southern California was so beautiful, my mouth watered as I made my way cross-country, headed to graduate school in La Jolla. Once the plane landed, I realized the sense behind the phrase “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”

During my tenure on the West Coast I visited home as many times as possible, even if it was just through my paintings and drawings. La Jolla certainly has it good points; the cove and turquoise-blue sea make it deserving of its name, “The Pearl”; still, its surrounding desert does not warm this heart.

The richness of the wetlands and barrens of New Jersey have not only captivated and inspired many an artist and writer, these ecosystems have slowly gained recognition in much wider circles. Eventually, my home on the lake was demolished so that the wetlands could be preserved. The area is earmarked to become a state-preserved conservancy area. Nothing of my physical home is left save memories and all those trees I grew up with, which, with the help of the state of New Jersey, are bound to proliferate.

The last time I visited the area, a magnificent wild holly, about fifteen feet tall with an almost perfectly erect, natural triangular habit, was in full bloom. In the dead of winter this tree greeted me at the bottom of the hill, as I walked back and forth on the dirt road, passing a natural bubbling brook that flows over red earth and pale river rocks, the dam, and the spill­way for which the road was named.

When I returned home years later, that precious holly was still there and decked in the finery that only rich, red berries can offer. Tears streamed down, nestling in the fibers of my down jacket, and they threaten to do the same now as I remember how branches of holly were annually cut by Dad and carted inside to decorate for the Christmas season.

Holly’s deep-green, leathery leaves and vibrant red berries brightened many a holiday spirit, no matter what else we had or didn’t have. The bittersweet joy holly brought that day was short-lived. I was on the way to Salem Hospital to visit my father; he was hooked up to machines and not expected to live long, because that unnatural state was against his living will.

The Path of Healing Memories

I write about holly in the past tense because for a good while it was a part of my past. Holly grows readily in southern New Jersey, but not so well in the Midwest’s harsher winter climate.

Those boughs and wreaths created lovingly by my parents from Jersey holly became a luxury I could no longer afford, living where I do; one would have to fork over big bucks to a company like Smith and Hawken, or special order from a local florist, for what would still be only a temporary pleasure. This goes to show one of the major lessons of this book: we should never take our indigenous or local trees for granted, because they are precious as well as being specific markers of home.

While not useful for the cancer and pneumonia that besieged my father’s lungs, holly has numerous recorded uses among early African Americans along the southeast coast, particularly in Gullah medicine. Holly’s leaves were boiled with pine tar, strained, and served warm as a drink to bring down fever. Holly leaf tea was also used to hasten recovery from measles.

I returned after my heartbreaking visit home and found, much to my surprise, a holly sapling, which I had not planted, growing beneath my peony bush just as spring finally appeared. While I thought I was all cried out, that sweet little emblem of home brought more stinging tears to my eyes. It was almost as though it were planted by memory and yearning concerned with place, or stranger still, my father’s spirit, since he had passed on.

This new seedling grew from memories of home, and to this day I tend it carefully. Due to our harsh winters, until it grows too large I’ll let it grow strong shielded by the peony, spirituality, and faith.

Copyright ©2024. All Rights Reserved.

Article Source:

BOOK: The Healing Tree

The Healing Tree: Botanicals, Remedies, and Rituals from African Folk Traditions
by Stephanie Rose Bird.

Reclaiming traditional botanical and herbal practices has never been more important than it is today. So much of our future depends on our ability to use ancient earth knowledge. In this crucially important book, author Stephanie Rose Bird recounts the story of the sacred wood: how to live in it, learn from it, and derive spiritual enrichment from it, as well as how to preserve and protect it. 

The Healing Tree offers functional, accessible recipes, remedies, and rituals derived from a variety of African and African American traditions to serve mind, body, soul, and spirit. It celebrates the forest: its powers, spirits, magic, medicine, and mysteries. Stephanie Rose Bird.shares how trees have provided her with personal healing, then allows us to share in that process for our own benefit. 
 
Previously published as A Healing Grove, this updated edition includes a new preface by the author and a source guide for the botanicals discussed within.

Click here for more info and/or to order this paperback book. Also available as an Audiobook, Audio CD and as a Kindle edition.

About the Author

Stephanie Rose Bird, is the author of over eight books. She holds a BFA cum laude from Temple University, Tyler School of Art and a MFA from University of California at San Diego where she was a San Diego Opportunity Fellow. She was a professor of fine art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago for many years. She has also taught at the Illinois Institute of Art, Chicago Botanic Gardens and Garfield Conservatory. Stephanie Rose works as an artist, herbalist, aromatherapist and sole proprietor of Almost Edible Natural Products. Her product line features herbal soap, incense, potpourri, bath salts, sachets and dream pillows.

As a Fulbright Senior Scholar, she studied the art, rituals and ceremonies of Australian Aborigines in the outback of the Northern Territory, as a field researchers. her fine art is held in several important national and international art collections, and she has exhibited in numerous galleries, museums, universities and public spaces.

Stephanie is a hereditary intuitive and healer specializing in positive energy work and spiritual cleansing using African plant wisdom.

Website: www.stephanierosebird.com

More Books by the author.

Article Recap:

The healing power of trees extends beyond aesthetics; it is deeply rooted in personal, cultural, and spiritual identity. Stephanie Rose Bird recounts her lifelong spiritual connection to nature, shaped by childhood oaks, urban displacement, and the ancestral significance of holly. Oak trees provide grounding, while holly represents resilience and remembrance. Through changing landscapes, trees remain emotional anchors, guiding healing, memory, and transformation across generations.

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