Anyone can launch an herbal brand now.
Not everyone can tell you who taught them. I can.
You came here for a reason. Maybe a season of your body asking questions no one was answering. Maybe a longing for something rooted. Maybe just curiosity, which is its own kind of return.
Either way, I’m glad you’re here.
THE ROOT
Rosemary Gladstar
The godmother of American herbalism
Before herbalism had a renaissance, Rosemary Gladstar was teaching it. She founded the California School of Herbal Studies in 1978, co-founded United Plant Savers to protect the wild medicinal plants of North America, and spent five decades putting plant knowledge back into common hands. Much of what is practiced as Western herbalism today passes through her classrooms, her books, and her students. She is not my teacher. She is the root system my teacher grew from, and the standard this apothecary answers to.
MY TEACHER
Seraphina Capranos
Named "a young Elder" by Rosemary Gladstar
My teacher is Seraphina Capranos, one of Canada's leading herbalists. When Rosemary Gladstar calls you a young Elder, the tradition is telling you something. I began studying with Seraphina in 2022 through Ecoversity, then Into the Wild, then Rose and Rise, hundreds of hours of materia medica, formulation, and the discipline of knowing a plant before you ask anything of it. The study has not ended. It is not supposed to.
student, still
Jasmine Simone
I am the third name in this chain, and the most junior, which is exactly how I want it. Every formula in this apothecary is built on materia medica passed hand to hand: the plant knowledge my grandmother carried without naming it, and the formal study my teacher demands. I make nothing I was not taught to understand. When I do not know, I go back and ask. That is what a lineage is for.
The training every formula must pass
honoring the lineage
My formulas still go back to my teacher. Every formula gets a second look before it ever reaches a batch: the questions trained into me by my study. Is this the right plant, the right part, the right preparation, the right amount, the right season of a woman's life? A formula that cannot answer those questions does not ship.
Genus, species, plant part, on every label
Precision is respect
Every label in this apothecary carries the full botanical name of every plant: genus, species, plant part. It is not decoration. Precision is a form of respect, for the plant, for you, and for the care provider you might hand the bottle to. It is the first thing my training demands and the first thing you can check.
What a formula is not for, named plainly
The honest edges
We tell you what a formula is not for. Pregnancy cautions, medication interactions, the honest edges of every plant. A tradition that only tells you the good news is not a tradition, it is marketing. Knowing when not to use an herb is half of knowing the herb.
STILL LEARNING
The study continues: the next course, the plant walks, the long apprenticeship that herbalism actually is. I am not improvising. I am carrying.
NEXT
Where to go from here
Our Story
The woman behind the work
THE APOTHECARY
Begin where you are
SOURCING & craft
Where the plants come from
SMALL BATCH
Made by hand in our Los Angeles apothecary
WILDCRAFTED & ORGANIC
Herbs gathered seasonally or grown by farmers we trust
CRAFTED SLOWLY
Each formula prepared slowly, never faster than the plants allow
ROOTED IN LINEAGE
In the tradition of the women who have come before us