Gemmotherapy

Gemmotherapy-[from Lat. gemma, bud, and New Lat. therapīa, Grk. therapeia, medical treatment] is a form of herbal medicine that uses remedies made principally from the embryonic tissue of various trees and shrubs (the buds and emerging shoots), but also from the reproductive parts (the seeds and catkins) and from newly-grown tissue (the rootlets and the cortex of rootlets). In two instances, remedies are also made from the sap.
This raw material is taken in the Spring (in the case of the seeds, in the Autumn), at the peak time of the tree or shrub’s annual germination, in order to capture the various nutrients, vitamins, plant hormones and enzymes that are released during this process, and which in some cases are only present in the plant at this time. Some practitioners of gemmotherapy (they are rarely referred to as ‘gemmotherapists’) furthermore believe that:

• the vital energy of trees and shrubs is at its highest point when the new leaves, branches and flowers begin to emerge
  


• the vital energy is concentrated in these parts
  


• this energy in some way remains in or informs the resulting gemmotherapy remedies; and
  


• the efficacy of gemmotherapy remedies is enhanced or explained by it