This week, I walked the Orto Botanico di Padova, founded 1545—the oldest medicinal plant garden in continuous use. It isn’t organized by species. It’s organized by healing action: cardiac, sedative, digestive, diuretic, toxic. Goethe’s palm still grows. Mandrake is tucked behind glass. Yarrow, belladonna, foxglove, meadowsweet—some I grow, some I’ve only read about. This garden isn’t just a museum. It’s a living call to action. A living materia medica. A reminder that plants hold possibilities we’ve not yet uncovered. Why do herbalists still lean so heavily on “traditional use”? Because in the U.S., fewer than 100 medicinal plants have been rigorously studied in clinical trials—out of tens of thousands of potential healing species. Why? • Research is slow, expensive—and most plants can’t be patented. • Western systems often dismiss Indigenous, diasporic, and women’s herbal traditions. • Plants are chemically complex—hard to standardize into pills. And while we stall… In the U.S. a...